FOOTBALL LEAGUE bosses are reportedly hoping to stage the Championship promotion play-offs even if the regular season cannot be completed.
Talks are ongoing over the viability of bringing second, third and fourth-tier clubs back for the final rounds of 2019/20 on both health and financial grounds.
Staging games behind closed doors would slash clubs’ revenue streams due to a lack of gate revenue and the fact players would be owed appearance fees and other bonuses.
Such a matter is less of an issue for the Premier League, where broadcast income holds a greater sway on the top-20’s coffers.
And while Championship sides may also be able to plot a financially viable course to finish the season, it is far from guaranteed that they will be allowed to do so.
In the event of the season being cancelled, the Guardian report on EFL bosses still hoping to hold the play-offs.
Should the Premier League round off each club’s nine or ten remaining games, the Championship is said to view staging at least three promotion showdowns as feasible.
The traditional home and away two-legged semi-finals could be replaced by one-match deciders, behind closed doors and potentially at a neutral venue, before a final.
This will allow the division to promote three teams on the premise that three sides are relegated from a completed Premier League season.
Should the top-flight not finish and refuse to accept a 23-side roster in 2020/21, negotiations and legal challenges are predicted to be rife as clubs jostle for the limited spots among English football’s elite.
In particular, Leeds and West Brom sit seven and six points clear, respectively, in the automatic promotion spaces.
Under this plan, the pair would be granted their place in the Premier League.
Currently residing in the play-offs are Fulham, Brentford, Nottingham Forest and Preston.
The Championship is unlike most other leagues in this pandemic as every side has played the same number of games, making it relatively straightforward to draw a line across tight contests.
Points-per-games ratios would not be necessary when condemning Bristol City, Millwall, Cardiff, Blackburn and Swansea to another season in the second-tier despite there being just a three-point gap between sixth and 11th in the notoriously tight play-off race.
Down the other end, it remains unclear how relegation would be settled given the implausibility of creating a League One with 27 teams.
A similar plan at that level would hit its own issues – such as a potential backlash against a points-per-game calculation that changes the makeup of the third-tier’s existing play-offs by pushing Wycombe up from eighth to sixth.
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