London, (Samajweekly) Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel has responded to Jurgen Klopp’s admission that Liverpool received several ‘false positive’ Covid-19 tests last week, saying we need more transparency on postponement of matches.
Tuchel admitted he has no reason not to believe the Liverpool manager but has called for more transparency around postponements.
“But transparency most of the time helps, and in these decisions, it would help to make people understand. In general, we can still be happy we have fans, and fans are still allowed in the stadiums. I guess everybody is trying hard to have a squad ready and competitive for every match,” he sai”.
“No interpretation, I believe him and people will look into it. It can happen. We had one false-positive test at Wolverhampton. One false-positive and sent Jorginho straight home. I know what you mean as we had games postponed when we arrived at Wolves.
“Decisions were taken and you know my opinion but I will not comment on other club’s situations. We struggled and we still can struggle anytime like anybody can. I don’t know enough about the situation to comment,” Tuchel said.
The first leg of the match against Arsenal, scheduled to have taken place on January 6, was called off after Liverpool sent a request to the EFL to have the game postponed.
Liverpool claimed that they could not get a team out, even when youth players were taken into consideration, due to a Covid outbreak affecting players and staff. But just three days later, on Sunday, manager Klopp admitted that a clutch of “false positives” had been recorded.
Jurgen Klopp admitted on Sunday that Liverpool had a number of “false positives” in the build-up to their Carabao Cup tie with Arsenal
Speaking after Liverpool’s win over League One Shrewsbury in the FA Cup, Klopp said, “We thought we had a proper outbreak last week and it showed up we had a lot of false positives actually.
“But still the rules are like they are and so all these players who are false positive couldn’t play today or we decided not to play them for whatever. So the only real positive case from the team was Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.”
However, the EFL have confirmed that they are satisfied that Liverpool had legitimate grounds for a delay at the time of their appeal, that they provided all the necessary evidence, and that an investigation will not be taking place.
