David Woods

Mon 8 June 2020 7:36, UK

Leeds United are preparing to fire up their bid for promotion, with nine games standing between them and the Premier League. 

Games kick-off a week on Saturday and so far there have been no serious setbacks to the restart. The Premier League starts a few days earlier.

It’s a critical week, though, with plenty happening. Here’s a round-up of all you need to know about everything that matters for Leeds.

The vote

The big news this week is the potentially season-ending vote across the whole of the EFL. Clubs have until Tuesday to vote on the framework of rules that will be used in the event of the season not being finished.

The key issue for Leeds is that relegation stays on the table. This is one of the votes and it’s important to keep it or Leeds could face the prospect of Premier League clubs using it as a precedent to get relegation blocked in the top-flight.

The EFL will then split into four leagues and vote on whether to play on. The Championship is expected to play on but Leagues One and Two could be ended early.

Fixtures

We know that Leeds will be playing Cardiff on the weekend of June 20 and then Fulham the weekend after. The EFL removed the first round of midweek fixtures to give the players a break after their first competitive game in three months.

What we don’t know is exactly when these games will be played, although we’re expecting both to be picked up by Sky Sports. However, Sky can only show a maximum of six games from any one club, so perhaps the Cardiff game might not be televised. Sky will want to be there when Leeds can actually win promotion. Fans can watch any games not on Sky on LUTV with the price set at £10 a game.

Kick-off times are 12.30pm, 3pm and 5.30pm on Saturdays and 12pm on Sundays. Friday night games are 6pm and 8pm.

Testing

The latest round of testing saw a big drop in positive results, down to just two from 1,179 individuals. One of these has been confirmed as a member of staff at Barnsley, which means a maximum of just one player has tested positive.

That’s great news for the restart and also for Leeds, who reportedly had their first positive test last week. All the talk is that it wasn’t a first-team player but one from the Under-23s – however, the official club line is not to talk about testing so it’s all speculation.

There are a further two rounds of testing this week and any players testing positive would almost certainly miss the first round of games.

Friendlies

Leeds got the go-ahead to play 11 v 11 matches over the weekend which opens them to playing friendlies. West Brom drew 2-2 with Aston Villa on Saturday. No games have been confirmed for Leeds yet but we expect them to play at least one friendly game and we’re expecting to get confirmation of that later this week.

MOT Leeds News columnist Paul Robinson expects Leeds to play local sides such as Doncaster and Rotherham.

In other Leeds United news, ‘That’s been going around’ – National journalist reacts to latest QSI-Leeds takeover claim