WHAT’S THE LEAST-BAD OPTION...?
Chris Dunlavy explores the dilemma facing football
PUBLICLY, elite football in England has been suspended until April 3 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Privately, however, FA chairman Greg Clarke has warned both the Premier League and EFL that he does not believe the domestic season can be completed.
It is an unprecedented situation with no obvious solution – so what are the scenarios open to the authorities?
EXPANDED PREMIER LEAGUE
One potential solution mooted in the hours following the announcement is to abandon the current campaign and begin the 2020-21 season - on time - with a 22team Premier League.
This would see Leeds and West Brom - the Championship’s current top two - promoted with nobody demoted to take their place. Cup competitions would be suspended to make room for the extra fixtures, with five teams relegated from the top flight to restore the status quo.
If harsh on those in the playoffs, it has merit. Were Leeds and West Brom to finish the season in their current positions, both would go up by right. The same cannot be said of Fulham in third, making it difficult to make so strong a case for their promotion.
Furthermore, the duo have simultaneously occupied the automatic promotion places since November 23. They are unequivocally the best teams in the division.
The two vacant spaces in the Championship would presumably be taken by those currently in League One’s two automatic places. As it stands, that is Coventry and Rotherham United.
In League Two, there are three automatic promotion places, a situation that might have posed a problem in any previous season. Fortuitously, however, the demise of Bury means there is space for one extra team in League One.
So is it feasible? Yes, but fraught with issues. Resistance – possibly legal – is sure to come from teams chasing promotion, especially in League One where just three points separate Rotherham in second and Wycombe in eighth.
What, too, of the effect on the National League? League Two would either have to run with a 23team division in 2020-21 or admit an extra side from Non-League. The first option would hit EFL clubs in the pocket; the second set a three-up/three down precedent that the EFL has resisted for many years, and cause a ripple effect right through the pyramid.
DECLARE THE SEASON NULL AND VOID
Clearly the worst of all possible worlds, a complete cancellation would at least remove all subjectivity from the argument.
No titles. No promotion. No relegation. Everybody simply starts again in August in exactly the same division.
Logistically, it would work. But, again, there are myriad problems. West Brom, for instance, have received £35m in parachute payments in each of the last two seasons. Next season, that figure will fall to £14m before ceasing altogether in 2021-22.
Most - if not all - of that money has been invested into paying high salaries. Proponents of FFP would call that reckless; the Baggies would argue they have enacted a risky but ultimately successful business plan due to culminate in promotion.
Yet through no sporting failure or genuine fault of their own, they could find themselves playing in the same division, with many of the same players and a £16m hole in the budget.
Will the Premier League extend parachute payments? Will the EFL declare a moratorium on Financial Fair Play, which allows maximum losses of £39m over three years? After all, if your points and goals cease to exist, shouldn’t your expenditure be scrubbed from the record too?
These are the issues the EFL must wrestle with. And, from a sporting perspective, it doesn’t sit well that the only real benefactors are clubs saved from relegation.
FINISH THE SEASON
According to Darragh MacAnthony, the chairman of Peterborough United, both of the above options are out of the question.
“Cancelling leagues, promotions, relegations - it is just not feasible,” he said. “Because when this virus passes and normal life resumes that will just be a lot of lawsuits. The only solution is to delay the season.”
But with mass gatherings set to be banned next week and a peak in coronavirus not forecast until June at the earliest, nobody knows how long that delay will be.
Playing behind closed doors is not an option in the EFL, at least without some sort of financial support to cover overheads. Lower league clubs reliant on gate receipts simply cannot afford to play in empty stadiums and will strongly resist any directive to do so.
Another obvious problem is player contracts. In League One and Two especially, the majority of players are on one-year deals that expire in June.
Few footballers would play and risk injury whilst out of contract. So are clubs expected to re-employ players they no longer want purely to play the final ten games of a season - despite not knowing which division they will play in?
Even if they did, clubs may not have enough healthy players to field a team. And will players and coaching staff who are unaffected be willing to put themselves at risk?
Bear in mind, too, that the summer of 2021 is now likely to host the European Championships, leaving little scope to push back the start of the 2020-21 season. Something would have to give.