Premier League must lead by example by putting health before money… and VOIDING the season

IT doesn’t require 20/20 vision to see that Premier League clubs are between a rock and a hard place about whether or not to complete the season.

Karren Brady went early, saying the season should be deemed null and void, with West Ham’s plight likely at the centre of her thinking.

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Simon Jordan says the season must be voided, with health prioritised over money

Leeds also look set to miss out on promotion if the season is voidedCredit: Getty Images

Despite universal derision, time is proving she wasn’t necessarily wrong.

As Premier League clubs stare at the consequences of a season in ruins, jeopardy at every turn, their incoming chairman’s ability to not be able to do right for doing wrong will be bettered by only Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock.

The season, for all manner of reasons, needs to be completed properly, not by changing the format. And, as yet, it hasn’t reached the tipping point where that’s an impossibility.

But, frankly, if a June-only return date is available for football to complete its calendar then the 2019-20 season should be voided.

In the 1974 Charity Shield, two domestic powerhouses playing in that game, Liverpool and Leeds, would never have thought, 46 years later, one would be vying for their first championship in 30 years and the other out of the elite for nearly two decades.

APOPLECTIC REDS

They will both be apoplectic about any voiding notion.

But bringing back football in the eye of a pandemic, to protect Premier League broadcast deals which can be renegotiated, to give Liverpool the title and perhaps promote Leeds and West Brom, makes scant sense to the majority of the football world.

And it has greater risks attached.

Clubs in the Premier League are often quick to leave behind moral and collective responsibilities. So while the right noises will be made, they want football back.

Or more so, they need it back to keep the money.

Ironically, the bigger problem for football is the longer game of a spectator-less future and two billion holes next year.

Time should be spent:

• Renegotiating with broadcasters to protect income by giving them more games for the next two seasons.
• Heading off at the pass anarchy and compensation mentalities if the season shuts down uncompleted or, worse still, is completed with a different set of rules than those it started with.
• Building solutions to likely spectator-less sport with digital and AI technology.
• Refinancing and smashing into reforms to get control away from players, bringing stability.

SPORTING INTEGRITY GONE

Forget the nonsense about sporting integrity. That’s gone — if it ever existed.

Playing behind closed doors is inevitable but the idea that football is returning in June is simply not right, given what we know now about contagion and second waves.

Ironically for a Football League already in meltdown, if games return it creates more problems for them. Clubs will have to remove furloughed staff, adding costs without any benefit for 90 per cent of them.

Backbone and leadership is to the fore, with EFL chairman Rick Parry insisting that promotion and relegation will not be taken off the table.

That flies in the face of certain clubs in the Premier League thinking they are a law unto themselves and can pull up the drawbridge.

Already there are rumblings of players not wanting to return in June.

So alongside being told to do one over financial support, clubs will have the further indignation of players telling them they don’t wish to play even if Project Restart gets some coherence in its thinking.

If and when a player or member of a football organisation gets the disease and, God forbid, worse, it could bring the whole avarice-ridden temple down on football’s head.

Every other facet of sport has compromised but apparently our Premier League is immune.

Football returning prematurely to increase morale, as advocated by the Government, is not its job.

Its job is to return when it is right, to lead by example and not show self-interest. And it needs, for once, to show pragmatism and restraint.

*SIMON JORDAN’S Final Word is on talkSPORT on Sunday from 5-8pm.

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk