English Football League (EFL) chair Rick Parry has revealed the date that Stoke City, Burton Albion and Port Vale’s season must end by.
Speaking at a Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee meeting on Tuesday morning (May 5), the former Liverpool chief executive stated: “Our end date, realistically, is July 31, because of the situation with players’ contracts.
“We can’t go beyond July. Players have been furloughed, staff have been furloughed, to expect our smaller clubs to come in and train now, to forego the furlough, only to find out in a month’s time they can’t play would be a complete mess.
“”The one plea I would made is that I think the Premier League and Government are working on a twin track approach, which is to decide it is safe to return to training and then make a decision on returning to play.
“That absolutely does not work for us. We need to be making decisions in days, so what we need is guidance for a return to play and we need that very, very quickly.”
Mr Parry went on to explain that the EFL is “heading for a financial hole of about £200 million cash hole by the end of September” and that it has “a great deal of uncertainty around next season.”
In regard to playing the remaining fixtures at neutral grounds, he commented: “We are modelling many scenarios.
“Our preference would be to play on the 71 grounds, we are not sure that there is an overwhelming argument, particularly if you go down our divisions, the probability of fans congregating is a major one.
“We are not going to take any decisions that will impose strain on emergency services.”
Parry also said that we was “a big believer on restricting squad sizes, particularly in the lower leagues.”
In the meeting he also stated that implementing salary caps may another avenue the EFL explores and that he is expecting that three clubs will be promoted to the Premier League.
In other news, Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive Gordon Taylor has suggested that one way forward may be to play halves that are shorter than 45 minutes to minimise the risks of coronavirus.
Parry said that although there hadn’t been any discussions in the EFL about this possibility, “I don’t think we should be ruling out any creative ideas.”
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