Why can't I watch Brighton when 5,000 get green light for 02 music concert?

In the latest column from Brighton & Hove Albion podcast Football, the Albion and Me, host Richard Newman suggests preventing fans from returning to stadia only makes sense if it’s applied across the entertainment sector.

It’s fair to say that start of the Premier League season, the period before this international break, has been nothing short of bonkers.

Shedloads of goals, freak results, entertainment everywhere – yet despite all of that, a lot of football fans still feel slightly empty that these spectacles were not witnessed by crowds inside stadia.

Would Manchester United have won last month’s game at Brighton, when Albion hit the woodwork five times and had an awarded penalty overturned? It could have been very different.

Setting out my stall from the very start, I’m not saying we need to rush to get fans back in to sporting fixtures without the necessary procedures in place.

Yet, I have been extremely fortunate to be inside stadia since the restart while covering Premier League matches for radio, and I can’t think of a safer place to be.

The Covid-safe measures are well thought out and strictly applied. Brighton’s recent test event, a pre-season friendly with Chelsea, was widely praised as an overwhelming success.

October was originally earmarked as the month when fans would return to sporting fixtures in the UK, albeit in limited numbers.

Yet the rising rate of coronavirus restrictions put a stop to that and provisional plans were put on the backburner, an understandable temporary measure, while all parties took stock.

But last week it was announced that almost 5,000 tickets will be made available for a concert at London’s 02 Arena, an indoor venue, in a city with rising rates of infection.