Anxious Healy asks football chiefs for the magic number
■ Blues boss says it’s important for clubs to know how many games will be played
LINFIELD manager David Healy has called on the football authorities to discuss the growing possibility that the Irish Premiership will not complete a full 38 match season and inform the clubs as soon as possible about a potential new number so they know the end game well in advance.
Ideally Healy wants to play every fixture but with the Northern Ireland Football League (NIFL) Board moving to postpone games for a fortnight until January 23, following on from a Christmas break imposed by the
NI Executive due to the coronavirus pandemic and the late start to the current campaign, he feels “it will be hugely difficult and challenging.”
Unlike last year when Linfield were crowned champions on a points-per-game basis after a long and arduous process, NIFL already have a curtailment policy in place for this season in relation to matters at the top and bottom of the table should the campaign end prematurely and, while Healy is in favour of that what concerns him most right now is the numbers game.
League leaders Linfield have played 12 league games with second placed Larne on 11. Fifth placed Cliftonville with 13 have figured in the most matches and bottom club Carrick, on nine, the least.
Healy says: “If everyone looks at it with a little bit of reality, it will be hugely difficult and challenging for all clubs to play their full 38 games.
“I would imagine over the next two, three or four weeks that the powers that be will need to sit down and assess that.
“You can’t get to 19 or 20 games and say ‘ oh by the way we are stopping the league after 22 games or 27 games’. There needs to be information passed to the clubs as quickly as possible to give them an understanding of what needs to be done or the number of points required to be successful this season.
“Of course we want to play all the games but the authorities need to be coming together and give clubs notice about how many matches we can actually play here.”
Clubs are banned from training this week, but can resume from next Monday.