‘Hard to say to Leeds’ – Sky Sports pundit delivers verdict on promoting teams from Championship
Sky Sports pundit Paul Merson has said that it would feel wrong to award Liverpool the title and promote Leeds if it wasn’t mathematically certain.
Merson – like a growing number of people in the football world – thinks that the domestic seasons must be finished, even if that means playing the games late and possibly delaying the start of the 20/21 campaign.
Talking on Sky Sports, Merson said, “It’s all well saying Liverpool are 25 points clear, but if I played snooker with my mate tomorrow, and I needed 25 snookers to win, and he said: ‘The game has finished, there’s no point playing on!’ – for the next week or two, I’d be saying: ‘But I could have won that!’
“Liverpool had won it, we know that, but it’s hard to say to Leeds and West Brom that they’re up! Fulham have taken gambles on players – they’ve kept Aleksandar Mitrovic and Tom Cairney, they brought Anthony Knockaert in, they took these chances to try and get promoted.
“Brentford next season – if they don’t go up, they will lose their front three. I could run through every club and their problems. Most clubs have taken a gamble and financially this is going to really impact them.
“I don’t think you can have 22 teams, promote West Brom and Leeds and then relegate five next year.”
Merson went on to say that the 20/21 season doesn’t have to start in August, and that with the Euros cancelled and no international friendlies, you could start the next season in September or October.
Finish the season
Finishing the 19/20 season increasingly seems like the only solution to a problem that has massive moral and legal repercussions.
Of course, that would rely on the fixtures being able to be played safely and with all players from all teams fit and healthy.
It’s a story that’s going to be ever-evolving and it is expected that the Euro 2020 finals will be postponed after a UEFA meeting later today.
Playing games with fans in the stadium looks highly unlikely in the foreseeable future but playing fixtures behind closed doors could be a possibility.
There’s still an infrastructure issue, with essential services like ambulances set to be stretched, but it’s definitely a solution we feel the governing bodies should be moving towards.
In other Leeds United news, ‘West Brom are okay’ – Ian Abrahams claims Leeds face big promotion problem if season ends late