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How and when will the season end ?


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First and foremost, football is not the priority and should not resume until it is 100% safe to do so, regardless of when that actually is. 

 

Secondly, no matter what decision is taken, some clubs aren't going to like it and legal challenges/issues will probably be involved. 

 

As far as I can see there are 3 options... 

 

1 - Finish the current season

 

For me, the season has to be played to its conclusion, considering over 3 quarters of it has already been played, if we were only 10 games in then it would be a different story. Obviously, this scenario would produce a problem with contracts as the season isn't going to be concluded before 1 July, but imo it's the lesser of 3 evils.

It would also obviously delay the start to the new season, but I don't see how you can begin that anyway until you have the final standings for the current season. 

 

2 - Declare this season null and void

 

Fans of certain clubs, most notably Liverpool, would quite rightly be furious were this to happen (not that I'd lose any sleep over them). 

Far from ideal, but imo more preferable than option 3.

 

3 - End the season now allowing current positions to stand. 

 

This would be ridiculous and cause all sorts of problems imo, including... 

 

- Although some outcomes are obvious (Liverpool, Bolton etc..) nobody has ACTUALLY won or lost anything yet. 

Any titles would therefore be tainted by the fact that they hadn't actually been won, not properly anyway. 

 

- Scenarios similar to and including Aston Villa, who would be relegated despite having a game in hand on the teams around them which, if won, would relegate Watford instead. 

 

- Then there's our own situation. 

What would happen re any points deduction? The people dishing it out would know EXACTLY how many points would be needed to relegate/save us, and this would DEFINITELY rub someone up the wrong way, whether it be us, or Gibson and friends. 

Unless of course we started next season on minus whatever instead. 

 

For those of you still awake and paying attention :biggrin:, like I said at the beginning, football not the most important thing at the moment, but it will resume.. eventually. 

 

 

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12 hours ago, Mystic Neg said:

Option 1 - Finish this season whenever we can play football again. The only seasons struck from the records are the ones not played yet which is fair. No lawsuits. 

 

Option 2 - Void this season and start the next season when that can start. The seasons struck from the records include one that was almost finished. Massive lawsuits.

 

Option 3 - Call the league tables finalised as they stand. Promote teams in automatic places. No relegations. PL - 22, Championship 24, League One 24, League Two 22 whenever we can start the following season. Adjust number of teams in league through tweaked promotion and relegation rules in future seasons. Limited law suits. 

 

There really is no rush to make a decision. That would be different if this were the only country dealing with the virus but that fact that all major European Leagues and other global leagues have stopped means there's no rush to play the games to keep up with dependencies like European Football and international competitions. 

 

The only people demanding the season to be voided are those like us who are in turmoil. I could understand if we were only halfway through the season but voiding in my opinion is the worst option in almost any future eventuality. 

there is no easy answer/option . but you certainly cant have the option where how league table stands now ,some have played less games (like pigs) some have more home games than away and some have a very easy run in while others may have top 2 to play , it can only be even when each team has played everyone home and away. there are so many complexities involved ie in restarting season in summer ,the loans go back in may some clubs heavily rely on those players , contracts run out june 30th for id say for an average of 40% of players. then even if you played behind closed doors there would still have to have limited access to a&e if a player got injured badly. the virus would still be around widely in summer so if  any player of any club picks it up then club  cant play for a minimum of 2-3 weeks.  my option would be scrap season start slightly later next season late august ,scrap league cup,and lower league version , scrap international weekends (pointless anyway as no air travel will be possible in 2020) that would allow 5 Saturdays and some midweek dates to become free . as the virus will be around for 18 months there will be games called off next season so allowing these extra spaces in football calendar will hopefully allow enough time for games called off next season to be rearranged .

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1 hour ago, MaliceInBlunderland said:

First and foremost, football is not the priority and should not resume until it is 100% safe to do so, regardless of when that actually is. 

 

Secondly, no matter what decision is taken, some clubs aren't going to like it and legal challenges/issues will probably be involved. 

 

As far as I can see there are 3 options... 

 

1 - Finish the current season

 

For me, the season has to be played to its conclusion, considering over 3 quarters of it has already been played, if we were only 10 games in then it would be a different story. Obviously, this scenario would produce a problem with contracts as the season isn't going to be concluded before 1 July, but imo it's the lesser of 3 evils.

It would also obviously delay the start to the new season, but I don't see how you can begin that anyway until you have the final standings for the current season. 

 

2 - Declare this season null and void

 

Fans of certain clubs, most notably Liverpool, would quite rightly be furious were this to happen (not that I'd lose any sleep over them). 

Far from ideal, but imo more preferable than option 3.

 

3 - End the season now allowing current positions to stand. 

 

This would be ridiculous and cause all sorts of problems imo, including... 

 

- Although some outcomes are obvious (Liverpool, Bolton etc..) nobody has ACTUALLY won or lost anything yet. 

Any titles would therefore be tainted by the fact that they hadn't actually been won, not properly anyway. 

 

- Scenarios similar to and including Aston Villa, who would be relegated despite having a game in hand on the teams around them which, if won, would relegate Watford instead. 

 

- Then there's our own situation. 

What would happen re any points deduction? The people dishing it out would know EXACTLY how many points would be needed to relegate/save us, and this would DEFINITELY rub someone up the wrong way, whether it be us, or Gibson and friends. 

Unless of course we started next season on minus whatever instead. 

 

For those of you still awake and paying attention :biggrin:, like I said at the beginning, football not the most important thing at the moment, but it will resume.. eventually. 

 

 

 

Looks like we are aligned. The time to be creative with any future league formats is when you know it can start again. 

 

Using 2 months of when you can start again to finish this current set of games may be beneficial and may not be but it's fair. 

 

All the people saying void the season would be spitting feathers at the suggestion if we were in any of the top 8 places, they be foaming at the mouth if we were in either of the top 2 places 6 or 7 points clear after a 20 year wait. 

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15 hours ago, trev said:

Imagine being a Leeds or Liverpool fan right now.

 

Wow.

 

Talk about the stuff of nightmares.

 

I know football is very much secondary right now, but if it was us there would be a proper meltdown on here right now.

 

This year will literally be a year which will go down in history for various reasons. It's absolutely mental.


At least some good might come out of this mess 😃

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Guest Grez Bez

The most logical thing to do would be to end the season based on PPG/ Points per game.

 

BUT I hope they void the season just because of Liverpool and Leeds!

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23 minutes ago, Mystic Neg said:

 

Looks like we are aligned. The time to be creative with any future league formats is when you know it can start again. 

 

Using 2 months of when you can start again to finish this current set of games may be beneficial and may not be but it's fair. 

 

All the people saying void the season would be spitting feathers at the suggestion if we were in any of the top 8 places, they be foaming at the mouth if we were in either of the top 2 places 6 or 7 points clear after a 20 year wait. 

 

Restarting the current season isn't fair if contracts have expired and players complete previously-agreed moves or refuse to extend contracts or loans. You could have a situation where the squad that plays the final 9 games of the season is significantly different from that which played the previous 37, which opens up all sorts of issues around the integrity of the competition. 

 

Look at our squad as a case in point: we've got 15 players either out of contract or finishing their loans this summer. If a rival club is promoted or relegated as a result of another team's result against a potentially massively different Wednesday squad than the one they faced earlier in the season, would that be fair?

 

It would be naive to think there wouldn't also be all sorts of legal challenges if the EFL tried to follow that route, I'm afraid.

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I think what happens in other countries will have the biggest bearing, if they start voiding leagues then it’ll be a domino effect. For me this season should be ended, I don’t mind if Liverpool are crowned champions it’s pragmatic but someone will complain so it’s just one of them things for Liverpool in the grand scheme of things. I think champs lge won’t happen next year any way.

My issue with those saying we must play it out no matter what, is, what happens when a team has a player with symptoms and/or is confirmed, the whole team/club has to go into isolation, meaning they can’t fulfil the fixture, then what? This isn’t going away until there’s a vaccine. Or if a team hasn’t been able to train but another team has how is that fair? The integrity of the competition will be meaningless. This situation will go on for months with only very restricted relaxing of the guidelines on a gradual basis if and when it’s safe. Football can only seriously go on when this virus is gone surely?.

The one Good thing that may happen is at last there might be some constructive thinking about the structure and finances of football. But I won’t hold my breath  

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21 hours ago, the third man said:

Just declare it void now, delete it from the records, even the league cup that has been decided, and allow plans for next season to start

 

Just put everyone out of their misery

 

Read somewhere that all leagues below National League level have already done this

Agree apart from the League Cup.

 

That competition managed to finish on time so the result should stand.

 

As for the rest, put a line through it all and simply start the 2020/21 season when it becomes possible.

 

UTO

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8 minutes ago, HIGHERSTATE said:

Why not finish the season this Autumn (hoping were on top of the virus by then) and scrap next season.

 

Because the season would be over by Christmas with different players due to contracts / loan deals running out

 

and then clubs would have no income until the following season, not many clubs would survive this

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My personal hunch is that the season will be restarted, but not until late in the Summer. In addition to the leagues, there is also the FA Cup and Champions League to factor in, so this will take up at least two months to finish everything.

 

I can then see the 2020-21 season being a slightly weird one where we have full cup competitions squeezed in (League Cup, FA Cup and above all Champions League - money talks) but the league season is truncated. The tidiest way they can do this is just one set of fixtures each rather than two (i.e. home or away, rather than home and away). Which would be a 23-game season for the Championship. But if they can squeeze more in, there's nothing to say it won't be, say, 32 games, not symmetrical, but at least all the teams will know what they are signing up to and preparing for before the season starts.

 

People say there is a problem with many contracts ending in June, but I expect teams will sort out short term extensions for many essential players, but let the squad players leave. I.e. we would try and keep Fletcher but not Winnall. Even if a load of players were to leave in June, I don't see it as a massive problem. In January you have players leave and other players sign, the season still carries on. In fact, in the olden days loads of players used to move clubs, right up until the end of March and contracts used to be more irregular in length.

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21 hours ago, horny owl said:

It’s the only good thing to come out of this disaster

 

Liverpool and Leeds suffering is the ray of sunshine our country needs

as old blue eyes would say

 

that's life, that's what all the people say

won the league at christmas

null and void in May😂😂😂😂

seriously though I can't see how this season can be completed

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2 hours ago, Rogers said:

They’ll vote to give Liverpool the league. 
 

 

...and if they do vote to finish this season now and declare that the current positions stand then it is beyond reasonable doubt that Liverpool would have won the League. I am no Liverpool fan but I honest feel it would be unjust for them to not be crowned champions given they are 25 points clear of second place.  I can’t see that happening though due to the legal ramifications. 
 

2 hours ago, Mr Farrell said:

This is season is done.

 

Next season won't start until 2021 either.

 

It will get interesting to see how PL clubs will vote if given a choice. I think the teams from Brighton (15th) to Norwich (20th) would vote to declare the season null and void (to avoid relegation) as earning £150-200M far outweighs the income from 4 or 5 home matches. Liverpool and the pigs would vote to complete all games for obvious reasons. The Manchester clubs would probably vote for null and void to deny Liverpool.  I don’t know about the rest. 

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Imagine in their sordid planning to grab the hundreds of millions from sponsors the FA, EFL, UEFA  order football to restart behind closed doors only for one of the players/officials/emergency services to contract coronavirus and die from it! Legal proceedings against them without doubt. 

 

They won't be happy until they get their grubby hands on the cash on offer and all common sense goes out the window. Because this is what all the talk of restarting is about ... Money.

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Although, to go against my previous post, the precedent of a season being called off with about 8 games left to go did happen in Chile last year (due to the social protests taking up the vast majority of police resources, and also increasingly the football was an outlet for the protests).

 

They went down the current position = final position route, there was a similar situation in that the team in 1st (Universidad Catolica) was miles out in front, although not mathematically champions. They were awarded the trophy. For the relegation, this was contentious, as one of the two biggest clubs in Chile (Universidad de Chile) was in 17th place (out of 18, bottom 2 go down normally). Although there were a cluster of teams on similar points at the bottom. They decided to scrap relegation for that season and allow two teams from the second division to join the league, expanding the league to 20 teams.

 

The Cup competition had reached the semi-final stage and was played to a finish at the start of the next season. Rather than play the matches in Santiago (all 4 clubs in the semis were from Santiago) they were played well away from the capital in order to minimise violence. (A precedent for some horrible, money-spinning, end to the FA Cup in the summer in Saudi Arabia, or Qatar, on some spurious 'safety' grounds? They played the Spanish Super Cup in the MIddle East last year).

 

This is where it all starts to get a bit silly, as Universidad de Chile, as well as being in 17th place, were in the semi-finals of the Cup, they still had a chance to qualify for the continental competition. The winner of the Cup in Chile goes into the Copa Libertadores, not the second-tier Cup like in Europe. Their semi-final opponents, Union Espanola, insisted that as the highest placed league team left in the cup competition they should automatically get the place (they were 9th, but the other semi-final was 1st vs 2nd who had already qualified). The league disagreed and told them to play the match. Union Espanola refused, and Universidad de Chile were awarded a walk-over 3-0 win, and subsequently got through to the final (where they were thumped), but as a result qualified for Copa Libertadores.

 

A bit long-winded, but illustrates some of the legal wrangling that might ensue should they go down this route for next season.

 

 

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