EFL to end season this week - City likely to be promoted (4 Viewers)

There must be some lyrics we can adapt to In our Coventry homes for whenever we are back in a stadium. First draft

While we stayed at home,
Points per game Champions and it was fair,
With Robins, Kelly and Callum O'Hare,
While we stayed at home.....

This is an interesting article on The Athletic - This is what winning a title looks like in the time of... (is behind a paywall, but they are currently offering 3 months free access). Text copied below -

'There was no final whistle to mark Lorient clinching the Ligue 2 title. No celebration of their promotion on the pitch, the dressing room, in the stands or on the streets. The Domino’s Ligue 2 trophy was not paraded around the town.

It was a promotion unlike any other: one granted with a quarter of the season still left to play, by a decision of the French government and a series of votes from the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP). Those decisions are being challenged in court by teams that feel harshly treated.

This is what winning a title looks like in the time of coronavirus. All of the old rituals of footballing success have been abandoned. The narrative cleanliness we expect in late May will never arrive.

So how does it feel to win a title under these unique circumstances? What might Leeds United feel if the Championship is called off as it is or decided by points per game? The answer, according to Lorient president Loic Fery, is that it still feels good.

“Football is unfortunately secondary in the current circumstances,” Fery says. “However, this title, and promotion to Ligue 1, means a feeling of satisfaction. The club has worked consistently for this ambition since its relegation three years ago.”

The LFP’s decisions have certainly been controversial. Amiens have been relegated from Ligue 1 and are launching a legal challenge. Last week, their sporting director John Williams told The Athletic that “if you are relegated with 25 per cent of the games still to be played, that’s not fair”.

But Fery supports the LFP’s decisions. “I have always publicly supported the idea of restarting the league, if it turned out to be possible in the post-lockdown environment,” Fery says. But he adds that the LFP’s rulings were “fully coherent with the government decisions” once France’s prime minister Edouard Philippe had ended the season and then broadcasters Canal+ and beIN Sports had cancelled the contracts.

“The decisions are not only coherent, they are fully consistent with the governmental decision, the health situation, the rules of the league and the sporting merit,” Fery continues. “When you have 75 per cent of the games played, that may have been different from if you only had five per cent of the games played. But when you have a Formula One Grand Prix, and the Grand Prix has to be stopped because there is a big accident, or terrible weather, they just take the ranking as it was when they stopped the race.”

There is also a feeling of pride at the genuine “sporting merit” behind their promotion. Lorient were not awarded this title by a raffle. They have been top for most of the season, have the most points, have won the most games and scored the most goals. If anyone deserved to win the league and get promoted, after 28 games rather than 38, it is them.

“Despite the circumstances, which we did not choose, it’s basically the impression this is greatly deserved,” Fery says. “We’ve been in the top two for 27 of the 28 matches played. For more than 20 of those games, we have been in first place. Looking over the past 10 years, 100 per cent of the clubs that had the number of points that we had went up.”

The problem is that there have been none of the celebrations you would normally expect for an achievement like this. It is hard to think of anything less compatible with social distancing measures than a party or a trophy parade. There was a brief celebration on a video conference call (“a good moment”, which the players invited Fery to join) and that was it.

“The frustration is with the fans,” Fery says. “We didn’t have the emotion of being able to celebrate in front of them. Of course, we will catch up, we hope to have the fans soon. But at this stage, we cannot be sure of anything.”

The club intends to have a party with the fans at their stadium, the Stade du Moustoir, to mark their promotion. “We are going to plan this for sure. Probably around the start of next season.”

But no one knows when fans will be back inside stadiums and Lorient now have the difficult job of preparing for life back in Ligue 1 with no real idea of what that will look like or when it will start. How can you budget for such an uncertain future?

“Being promoted did not come as a surprise,” Fery says. “We started to work on promotion earlier in the season, knowing there was a chance this could happen. The difficulty is the fact that we don’t know when the league is starting again. We also have a lot of uncertainty as to the type of revenues the club will have next season. Will we have supporters? How will the commercial partners react? They are also greatly affected by the crisis.”

The current plan is that the next season will start on August 22, just over three months away. And so Lorient, like all French clubs, are currently working on their plans to return to pre-season. But that is difficult given the restrictions that currently exist on physical contact, as Premier League clubs are finding in their attempts to get training restarted.

“We are in the process of basically defining when the training restarts but I think it will be around mid-to-late June,” Fery says. “That is something that is being discussed by clubs. Close contact won’t be possible until the end of June. But I think we can restart training sessions in late June.”

Then there is the issue of building a competitive squad without a sense of how much money will be coming in. Lorient, like plenty of French teams, have made money selling players to the Premier League in the past: Laurent Koscielny, Matteo Guendouzi, Jordan Ayew, Didier Ndong and Lamine Kone all came to English football from there. But Fery does not worry too much about the potential threat of foreign transfer revenues getting turned off.

“If the Premier League experience difficulties, there will be less money coming from England, but maybe transfers will come from Italy, for example,” Fery says. “In Italy, it seems that the league will raise a large amount of equity investment that will be distributed to the clubs, so that should help them on the financial side. I would not be surprised if the talents from France start joining different clubs. But I do not anticipate a major drop of interest from the top English clubs. Although, it’s possible Championship clubs will have less buying power.”

Ultimately, Lorient already have a good team and they would not be preparing for major surgery to their squad, even in normal times. Yoane Wissa is their star player up front, Pierre-Yves Hamel is the perfect partner for him, Julien Laporte has been “the best central defender in the league” and 20-year-old midfielder Enzo Le Fee is rated by some as even more promising than Guendouzi when he went to Arsenal in 2018. The Lorient model, of academy players and astute signings, is set to survive into next season.

“We have our own academy and historically, our business model has been to construct a team with the core from the academy,” Fery says. “Any team that goes up has, usually, a very strong backbone. And, of course, you have to add here and there to make it an even more competitive team at the higher level. We will try to recruit a few additional great players but we don’t plan on fully reshaping the team.”

Most teams will find themselves in the same position this summer, whether that has always been their business model or not.'

If everybody that works in construction, factory, warehouse, manufacturing etc, so basically any job
that cannot realistically be done from home‘ are now being encouraged to get back to work ‘why not
Footballers.
I personally don’t think any of those should be returning to work yet ‘but just wondering why footballers
Are deemed a different case to millions of others.

Brylowes said:

If everybody that works in construction, factory, warehouse, manufacturing etc, so basically any job
that cannot realistically be done from home‘ are now being encouraged to get back to work ‘why not
Footballers.
I personally don’t think any of those should be returning to work yet ‘but just wondering why footballers
Are deemed a different case to millions of others.

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Why were footballers picked out by Hancock as a group of people that should do more? It's all weird really

Brylowes said:

If everybody that works in construction, factory, warehouse, manufacturing etc, so basically any job
that cannot realistically be done from home‘ are now being encouraged to get back to work ‘why not
Footballers.
I personally don’t think any of those should be returning to work yet ‘but just wondering why footballers
Are deemed a different case to millions of others.

Click to expand...

outside the premier league there’s no revenue wants they start games so it’s different to manufacturers who can sell their goods

CCFC88 said:

There must be some lyrics we can adapt to In our Coventry homes for whenever we are back in a stadium. First draft

While we stayed at home,
Points per game Champions and it was fair,
With Robins, Kelly and Callum O'Hare,
While we stayed at home.....

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That's absolute shite to be honest

Travs said:

That's absolute shite to be honest

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You can be the 'nasty' judge on the panel - always need one who gets straight to the point.

Travs said:

That's absolute shite to be honest

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Thanks. Friend

interesting tweet from FGR. Having a little dig at Tranmere including the quote from FGR chairman

Grendel said:

outside the premier league there’s no revenue wants they start games so it’s different to manufacturers who can sell their goods

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So there is no revenue in professional football outside the Premier league.

Now being widely reported than no decision is going to be made by the EFL this week, the suspense goes on!

Skyblue_CP said:

Now being widely reported than no decision is going to be made by the EFL this week, the suspense goes on!

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Sh*tting themselves about the legals

Skyblue_CP said:

Now being widely reported than no decision is going to be made by the EFL this week, the suspense goes on!

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It’s being reported Friday here based upon a quote by one of the chairmen EFL meeting live as Leeds United await decision on ending Championship season

Whilst the EFL are holding an important meeting to discuss plans for how the 2019/20 campaign can either be finalised or resolved, today's meeting won't be the last the EFL have this week.

Today, the EFL are holding a board meeting, which happen most most weeks, before they meet with the Premier League, Football Association and the Government tomorrow.

On Friday, League One and League Two chiefs will hold talks with the EFL, as the outcome of the League One and League Two campaigns are expected to be different from the outcome Championship clubs receive.

- From Leeds-live

BBC report that null and void is very unlikely

I am sticking with Ppg and possible playoffs teams x 4 pen shootout , why not a pen shootout

skybluesam66 said:

BBC report that null and void is very unlikely

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pen shoot out

skybluesam66 said:

BBC report that null and void is very unlikely

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where?

EFL are just making sure they can’t be opened up to legals once that’s clear it will be sorted

I’m not worried SISU batter people in court

Grendel said:

outside the premier league there’s no revenue wants they start games so it’s different to manufacturers who can sell their goods

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If there’s no revenue to re-start the games now below the Premiership where is the revenue to start a new season in August coming from ?

I am being told that BBC are reporting we are likely to be promoted, but I can't find the story

Talksport have just suggested the 3rd promotion spot my be decided by playing the playoff games as usual.
Assume that means weighted ppg to decided top 2 and wh's in the playoff.
That might pacify Peterborough

Brylowes said:

So there is no revenue in professional football outside the Premier league.

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Without paying customers it’s more expensive to put games on than not

SkyBlueTam said:

Talksport have just suggested the 3rd promotion spot my be decided by playing the playoff games as usual.
Assume that means weighted ppg to decided top 2 and wh's in the playoff.
That might pacify Peterborough

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This seams a sensible way to do it. If the means are there to get it done.

I think we are going g to here all sorts of things in the coming days

I'm prepared to wait a couple more days, the outcome will be the same, up as champions

SkyBlue Snowflake said:

I'm prepared to wait a couple more days, the outcome will be the same, up as champions

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You reliably informed us it would be Wednesday?

SkyBlueTam said:

Talksport have just suggested the 3rd promotion spot my be decided by playing the playoff games as usual.
Assume that means weighted ppg to decided top 2 and wh's in the playoff.
That might pacify Peterborough

Click to expand...

MusicDating said:

Like what appears to have happened in Scotland, I suspect the EFL have given hints to clubs at to what might happen if the remaining season was abandoned.

If they gave a nod that they'd get just the play-offs played (one game semis, final a few days later all at a neutral ground), and final positions would be based on Philosorapter's super computer predictions played out 10,000 times, then the EFL would defo get the votes to end the season now.

Tbf even the the Wycombe chairman has said end the season, so the financial situation must be pretty precarious.

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Just me and Snowflake in the know then...:emoji_smirk:

May I suggest,
In our Coventry homes
We're points per games champions
And that's only fair
We're led by Mark Robins
Though playing elsewhere

In our Coventry homes
We're points per game champions
And that's only fair
With Kelly and Godden
And Callum O'Hare[/QUOTE]

SlowerThanPlatt said:

You reliably informed us it would be Wednesday?

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He was certain

I think promoted teams is sorted they are probably sorting out the play off stuff etc

MusicDating said:

Just me and Snowflake in the know then...:emoji_smirk:

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But Snowflake more than you though, obviously lol ompus:

Danceswithhorses said:

But Snowflake more than you though, obviously lol ompus:

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Oh of course. I mean mine was mostly common sense. But obviously Snowflake has to rely on ITK...

MusicDating said:

Oh of course. I mean mine was mostly common sense. But obviously Snowflake has to rely on ITK...

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I think you'll find Snowflake said he heard it on Talksport

SlowerThanPlatt said:

You reliably informed us it would be Wednesday?

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Can't hold me responsible for EFL dicking around.Slowpratt or whoever you called

SkyBlueTam said:

I think you'll find Snowflake said he heard it on Talksport

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Talkshite never goes on my boom box, tried it once thought it was utter garbage