Third-tier torment set to continue for Cats
EFL PREPARES TO ABANDON LEAGUE ONE SEASON – REPORT
SUNDERLAND’S season could be over as the EFL prepares to abandon the League One and League Two seasons next week, according to reports.
With little prospect the season can be restarted in time to allow the 56 days EFL chairman Rick Parry believes are necessary for it to be completed, The Athletic claims the EFL will ask teams to vote on a method to settle promotion and relegation issues – with a weighted points-per-game system emerging as a strong contender.
Sunderland are just three points outside the automatic promotion places with eight games remaining and, if the season was able to resume following the Covid-19 pandemic, they would be strong contenders for a top-two finish or, failing that, a play-off place.
Given that if the season is abandoned there will be no play-offs, the top three teams in League One would be promoted.
Under the weighted points-pergame formula – which works out a club’s average PPG for home and away games separately based on matches played so far, with those totals each multiplied by 22 to represent the number of home and away games over the entire season and then added together – it would leave the current top three unchanged, with Coventry City crowned champions, Rotherham United second, and Oxford United third.
Sunderland would finish eighth under the formula, one place below their current position. The Wearsiders will feel hard done by if the weighted PPG formula is adopted, given that, on paper at least, they have one of the easiest run-ins of all the teams competing for promotion – and the formulas being proposed take no account of that.
In fact, under the model suggested, they are effectively penalised for having already played their more difficult fixtures because it will have had an impact on their average PPG.
Weighted PPG is not the only option under consideration.
Other proposals doing the rounds include non-weighted PPG, adopting the current league tables as final standings and taking the table at the halfway stage – when every team had played each other once – as the end point.
However, any system used to predict the outcome of Sunderland’s final eight games based on previous results would mean another season in the third tier for the Black Cats.
■ Sunderland are starting the search for a new club secretary, with head of football administration Brett Baker set to leave Wearside this summer.
Baker will be replaced when he leaves and the club has already begun the recruitment process to avoid leaving a crucial role vacant as football comesto terms with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.