Manchester City’s Boxing Day fixture against Leicester is expected to go ahead despite the Foxes’ recent problems with Covid-19.
Premier League managers and captains from all 20 clubs today met with officials to discuss a reaction to the spread of the omicron variant, which forced six of the 10 weekend fixtures to be called off.
They decided not to scrap the next round of games despite the spread of the Omicron variant and the effect it has been having on the programme.
City ’s win at Newcastle was one of the four games to survive, with the Blues not thought to have any current Covid cases in their squad — although Kyle Walker has been missing for a week with an unspecified illness.
But Leicester’s scheduled game at Everton was postponed, as was their midweek game against Spurs, after an outbreak in their camp that has affected nine players and three members of staff.
Leicester first encountered problems a fortnight ago, when seven players were forced to miss their Europa League game at Napoli due to illness, including Covid cases.
Among the casualties for the game were Ademola Lookman, Kelechi Iheanacho, Ayoze Perez and Daniel Amartey.
Leicester then beat Newcastle 4-0 but subsequently applied to the Premier League to have the Spurs game postponed last week, after suffering injuries to centre backs Jonny Evans and Caglar Soyuncu that further depleted their squad — but that request was turned down.
The game was finally called off when Spurs also reported an outbreak, and when Leicester declared they were closing their Seagrave training ground on Thursday as a 48-hour “circuit-breaker” to tackle the problem.
The training ground re-opened on Saturday, but with Everton also suffering cases, Sunday’s game was called off, leading to doubts over their Carabao Cup quarter-final against Liverpool this week, and the trip to face City on Sunday (Boxing Day).
With the initial batch of seven ill players now back in training after some had to self-isolate, Leicester are optimistic that, barring any further issues, they will be able to fulfil both fixtures this week.
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