Chairman Michael Eisner's message to the Portsmouth community amid coronavirus outbreak
Chairman Michael Eisner has sent a simple message to the Pompey community: hang in there.
Sending his best wishes to everyone associated with the Blues and those living on the south coast from Los Angeles, the Tornante chief reached out on the first day that the countrywide ban on elite-level football in England was really being felt.
Pompey’s League One game against Accrington on Saturday was the first of four matches that fall under the three-week suspension of football fixtures imposed by both the EFL and Premier League because of coronavirus.
Tuesday night’s home game against Doncaster Rovers will be the next match-day without the fulfilment of a fixture, with matches against Ipswich (March 21) and Oxford (March 28) to follow suit.
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At the moment, the Blues’ Leasing.com Trophy final against Salford at Wembley on April 5 is scheduled to go ahead.
But as supporters nervously await updates on that particular game, with more than 50,000 Pompey tickets sold, Eisner expressed the belief that people’s health should remain the top priority amid the Covid-19 outbreak.
He tweeted: ‘To our Portsmouth FC Community: You missed seeing the Accrington Stanley match today, as we did on iFollow from Los Angeles, but that means nothing when considering the health of our players, our fans, our management, and the South Coast of England.
‘Hang in there.’
On Friday, Blues director Eric Eisner also expressed concern about people’s health.
Before the ban on football until April 3 at the earliest was imposed, he described the situation as ‘crazy’ and backed calls for games to be suspended.