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Premier League announces return date with opening fixtures

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The top flight of English football, the Premier League, will return on the 17th June.

The announcement comes as training around the country has slowly ramped up from non-contact training between small groups of five, maintaining social distancing towards the agreement of a return to contact training.

The opening fixtures of the “project restart”, which will see the 2019/20 campaign get back underway following the global pandemic of the coronavirus will beĀ Aston Villa versus Sheffield United and Manchester City versus Arsenal.

This is because those four clubs have ten games remaining of their season, as those fixtures had been initially postponed due to the Football League Cup final between Manchester City and Aston Villa.

Once those two games have been completed then all 20 clubs in the Premier League will have nine games remaining to complete the season. The full first round of fixtures will kick off over the weekend of 20th and 21st June but as yet those fixtures, which will see AFC Bournemouth play for the first time in 15 weeks.

When the Premier League was suspended in March AFC Bournemouth were still due to play Crystal Palace, Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester City and Southampton at Dean Court, with away fixtures at Wolverhampton Wanderers, Manchester United, Manchester City and Everton.

Sky Sports News reporter Bryan Swanson said…

‘We have seen a shift in the last couple of weeks that have been helped by the testing. The Premier League clubs have taken part in three rounds of testing and there have been 12 positives cases, but 99.5 per cent of those testing have returned negative results.

‘Every positive result will have to have been taken seriously, but the relatively low figures will have given a degree of confidence for those players and managers that they are returning to as safe an environment as possible.

‘A lot can happen in the next three weeks but what clubs now have is that definitive line in the sand, they know what they are aiming for in terms of Project Restart. In the case of four of those clubs, they are playing on June 17, with the rest taking part over the weekend of June 19, 20 and 21.

‘The expectation from the Premier League is that the remaining 92 fixtures will be completed in a six-week timeframe. A lot of other items remain under discussion, notably where all the fixtures will be played.

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