DON’T CUT THE SEASON SHORT
Premier League clubs are to agree a threshold for the award of titles, european spots and the calamity of relegation in the event the season is curtailed. Points per game would then be invoked and places fixed accordingly. The League would set the bar at 19 games played, while the elite clubs favour 26, the rump in the middle 29 and those near the bottom a minimum of 32. Here’s what it should be: 38. Play the season to the end, or forget it. This is not a campaign like 2019-20 when Liverpool were so far ahead that, by now, there was only one winner. Stop the race today and manchester united triumph by 4.47 points from manchester City, with Liverpool third. Does that seem fair? Would it be right to relegate Fulham, two points behind Brighton, with two games in hand? Stop last season after 19, 26, 29 or 32 games and Leicester, not manchester united, reach the Champions League, while aston Villa or West Ham are relegated. it is only after the 37th game that what eventually became the top four and bottom three was revealed. and that was a season we considered predictable. Barring government intervention, there is no reason 2020-21 should not finish. if it means hasty rearrangements of the type Fulham weathered at Tottenham, so be it. There might even be a case, if postponements increase, to pluck matches from further along the schedule and play them now, if an opponent drops out. Without travelling fans, police or significant numbers of matchday staff to consider, this is a blank canvas and should be treated as such — particularly as some teams have played 18 games and others 15, making PPg calculations less reliable than ever. it is imperative that football affords maximum flexibility to allow completion. it would be wholly wrong to try predicting the future. in this of all years, anything could happen.
BARONESS CAMPBELL did not apply to be Football Association chair, apparently, because she believes she has unfinished business as Director of Women’s Football. You could say that. Unfinished business part one might involve finding a coach for the women’s team at the Olympics, now that Phil Neville is Miami-bound and Sarina Wiegman, his successor, will still be in charge of Holland in Tokyo. The succession has been clumsily mismanaged, leaving Team GB’s plans in jeopardy. Then there is the matter of the Women’s FA Cup, which has been suspended with three early rounds incomplete, because it is not classified as an elite event and cannot continue during lockdown. It seems Baroness Campbell, among others, failed to consider the possibility of a winter curtailment for grassroots sporting activity, and missed the chance to bring those matches forward to earlier in the calendar. With an entire competition now in crisis, it hardly supports an application for an even greater leadership role as FA chair. Any other business? Well, Campbell (above) is 72, and the current age limit for the job is 70. And as an FA employee she would not meet the criteria of an independent appointment, placing the organisation in breach of the Code for Sports Governance. Apart from that, then, a strong candidate and a great loss.
THE grand thing with Football association rules and principles is if you don’t like them, they’ve always got others. So it slipped out last week that any team unable to fulfil their Fa Cup tie due to Covid would be eliminated from the competition. it was a harsh rule, but a necessary one. There isn’t room in the calendar for postponements. This was why aston Villa and Derby fielded youth teams, and lost accordingly. But Shrewsbury Town were also unable to play against Southampton, and did not have the personnel to send out a shadow Xi. Very unfortunate, but tie over, it seemed. No. Shrewsbury and Southampton will now play on January 19, a development that one imagines would have been met with the odd raised eyebrow at Derby and Villa. maybe the odd raised voice, too. and flying crockery.