Pilgrims welcome Peterborough with fans set to remain away
ALL of Plymouth Argyle’s remaining games in League One this season look likely to be played behind closed doors.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set out a four-step roadmap for the easing of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions in England.
As part of step three, sports events can resume with spectators from May 17 at the earliest, but with capacity limits.
That is nine days after Argyle’s final League One game of the campaign, away to Gillingham.
The Pilgrims’ last fixture at Home Park in 2020/21 is against Sunderland the previous Saturday, on May 1.
The Government has announced that test events will be held ahead of a planned return of up to 10,000 fans to grounds - or 25 per cent of capacity at smaller stadia - no sooner than May 17.
A “series of pilots using enhanced testing approaches and other measures to run events with larger crowd sizes and reduced social distancing to evaluate the outcomes” will begin in April.
It is not clear whether Argyle will have the chance to be involved in staging any such test events at Home Park.
EFL play-off games after May 17 could be played in front of limited numbers of fans, with the finals scheduled to be played at Wembley on the bank holiday weekend of May 29-31.
Argyle played four matches in front of small, capacity-restricted crowds in December, including three at Home Park.
There was an attendance of 1,808 as a designated test event for the 2-1 defeat by Ipswich Town on December 5.
The crowd limit was then raised to 2,000 for the home games against MK Dons and Oxford United but it was back to behind closed doors after Christmas.
Argyle have 19 games remaining to play this season, starting with the visit of second-placed Peterborough United to Home Park tonight (7.30pm).
The Pilgrims will be looking to make it ten games unbeaten since the start of the year, but they face a Posh side that are second in the table afgter a run of four straight victories.
The match also sees two of the division’s top scorers go head-tohead - Argyle’s Luke Jephcott (16) and Posh’s Jonson Clarke-Harris (18).