BODDY’S BOMBSHELL
CITY CHIEF BELIEVES EFL POISED TO PULL PLUG ON LEAGUE ONE CAMPAIGN
COVENTRY City chief executive Dave Boddy is losing hope that this season’s promotion campaign will ever be completed.
The Sky Blues are five points clear at the top of League One and are seven points ahead of third-placed Oxford United.
But their almost certain promotion to the Championship is now in doubt after football was brought to a halt amid the coronavirus crisis.
Since that decision was made, just hours before Mark Robins’ City team were due to take on Shrewsbury Town at St Andrew’s, it has remained a mystery as to when and if the season would resume.
But Boddy has admitted that he now believes that the EFL are poised to pull the plug on the campaign and could do so by as early as next week.
The big challenges currently facing football clubs are financial with lower league sides completely starved of their main income source, and they could soon also be asked to fork out tens of thousands of pounds on testing kits should the FA demand football’s return.
However, the safety of the players remains the main priority and is currently something that cannot be protected in English football’s lower leagues, Boddy explained.
“We have always supported the premise of finishing the season, for sporting integrity.
“But as each day goes by it is looking unlikely [that the season will be finished],” Boddy said.
“I think it is looking like next week, maybe Wednesday could be the tipping point.
“That will depend on what Boris [Johnson] decides in terms of lockdown on Sunday and what we can and can’t do. The biggest problem we have is that, when we return to training, testing will be key. “We will have to test our players every time they arrive at the training ground,” Boddy revealed. “It is a contact sport. We can’t isolate people.
“We can do running separately but we can’t get them back to the level they need to be for match
It is a contact sport. Unless we can put testing in place, I don’t think a return can happen. Dave Boddy
conditions without contact. Unless we can put testing in place, I don’t think a return can happen,” he added.
Meanwhile, Sky Blues legend Micky Gynn has told the EFL to scrap their “inappropriate” plans to resume the football season.
Gynn wants to see the likes of Coventry City, Leeds United, and Liverpool handed league titles due to their commanding leads at the top of their respective tables.
“There is absolutely no way that football can return.
There are people dying,” Gynn told the Telegraph.
“You can’t have people dying, hundreds every day, and talk about playing football. We have played a lot of games, well over 75 per cent by now I would have thought.
“If you are top of the league you should win the league and if you are at the bottom, in the relegation places, you should be relegated.
“I would be quite happy with that. “I am not sure about playing games behind closed doors because football is a spectator sport, but with the number of people dying I think playing football is inappropriate,” he said.
“There is no correct answer, but we have played so much of the season now that the team at the bottom are there for a reason and the teams at the top are too.”