Leicester vs Crystal Palace: Premier League says match could still be postponed

Brendan Rodgers is relaxed about the prospect of Leicester being forced to play at a neutral venue

Leicester’s match with Crystal Palace on Saturday could still be postponed by the Premier League following the coronavirus spike and local lockdown.

The Foxes face Everton at Goodison Park on Wednesday, live on Sky Sports, but are due to host Palace at the King Power Stadium in the heart of the city on Saturday afternoon.

Government officials have recommended the current lockdown measures remain in force in Leicester for an extra two weeks as coronavirus restrictions are set to be eased across the rest of England from Saturday.

Although the health secretary Matt Hancock said on Tuesday that Leicester’s match with Palace would go ahead, the Premier league’s chief executive Richard Masters told parliament that contingency plans are in place for the game to be moved to a neutral venue or postponed if necessary.

The Safety Advisory Group has the final say on where the game will be played.

Everton vs Leicester

July 1, 2020, 5:30pm

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The Premier League believes all its stadiums are secure while clubs agreed ahead of the restart to use neutral venues in the event their games could not be played at home.

The Premier League still has a number of neutral venues on standby should any decision be taken that a game cannot be hosted at a club’s home stadium.

Hancock has ordered all non-essential shops to close from today, and all schools in the area to close for most pupils from Thursday.

He has also advised people in the wider Leicester area to stay at home as much as possible and avoid “non-essential travel”, and says the government will bring forward a change in the law to enable them to enforce the lockdown.​​​​

Hancock said: “We will be bringing forward a legal change very shortly in the next couple of days. Some of the measures that we’ve unfortunately had to take in Leicester will require a legal underpinning.”

The measures were taken as Leicester had accounted for “10 per cent of all positive cases in the country over the past week”.

Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers said on Monday that the squad was as safe as it could be, with all the players living outside the city boundary and driving into a secure training ground each day.