Crystal Palace’s preparations for the Boxing Day trip to Tottenham descended into chaos with their manager, Patrick Vieira, testing positive for Covid-19 while they were denied a last-minute request to postpone the fixture.
Osian Roberts, the assistant manager, took the team for the 3-0 defeat and, despite his efforts to play down the disruption, it was plain that the situation was far from ideal. Vieira is the second Premier League manager to test positive for the virus in the past few days with Aston Villa’s Steven Gerrard also now in isolation.
Palace did not specify how many players were affected by Covid but they were worried that, as Vieira was positive, there was the potential for him to have infected many of the squad as a close contact. As such, they felt the outbreak was still unfolding and after ordering the players to stay at home on Saturday night, rather than meet at the team hotel as usual, they became the latest club to demand a postponement.
The Premier League board denied the request after meeting on Sunday morning, feeling the club had sufficient numbers to fulfil the fixture. Although Palace only named seven substitutes, rather than the permitted nine, it appeared they were missing only seven senior players.
There was confusion among fans after reports that the game was set to be postponed and Palace only confirmed in a tweet at 11.34am on Sunday that it would go ahead as scheduled at 3pm.
“We met this morning at the hotel to prepare,” Roberts said. “Most of the time we would do that the previous evening but it’s difficult to do that these days with the situation as it is and so much uncertainty.
