EFL chairman reveals date season must be completed by

EFL chairman Rick Parry reveals the date the season must be completed by is July the 31st due to the much talked about contract issues.

The 2019/20 campaign has been suspended due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic since mid-March.

The delay means there will be contractual issues for players throughout the professional English football league pyramid, with many of them set to be free agents from June 30, with loan deals ending on the same date.

The Premier League are still hopeful of finishing the 2019/20 season, with clubs set to return to training in May, mainly to ensure substantial TV broadcast deals are completed.

As many know, matches will be played behind closed doors, it’s something top flight can do, but not the EFL with clubs suffering fiancially.

Because of this, Parry admits the season will have to be cut off by the 31st of July 2020.

Parry told the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said when asked about the impact on the EFL if the Premier League restarts: “We’d love to see some money trickling down, we haven’t seen any evidence of it yet but I’m sure the Premier League has some ideas that they will tell us about in due course.

“We want to resume playing, we’ve always said that purely from the view of sporting integrity when it is safe to do so.

“We want to make decisions based on hard fact and data rather than speculation. We will return when the government says it’s safe and sets the criteria and we’ll do so in a way that makes sure the players and staff are healthy, the health of a League Two player is just as valuable as the health of a Premier League player. We want to ensure there is no stress on the NHS, the frontline workers or the emergency services.

“The one plea I would make, and it’s a very sincere one, is I think the Premier League and the government are working on a twin-track approach, working out when it is safe to return to train and then when it is safe to return to play, that absolutely does not work for us, we have to work backwards.

“Our end date, realistically, is the 31st of July due to the situation with player contracts. We can’t go beyond July. Players have been furloughed, staff have been furloughed, to expect our smaller clubs to bring players and staff back into training now and forego the furlough, only to find out in a month that we can’t play, would be a complete mess.

“We actually need within days to be making decisions so what we need really is guidance on returning to play and we need that very quickly because we can’t delay decisions, working back from July, players need to return to training very soon so critical dates are coming up for us.”

Key couple of minutes of video of EFL chairman Rick Parry discussing why they’re heading for a £200m cash shortfall by the end of September that needs a rescue package but why parachute payments from the Premier League League are “an evil that need to be eradicated” pic.twitter.com/Gb23Jn5und

— Rob Harris (@RobHarris) May 5, 2020

Rick Parry has also told MPs that they expect 3 clubs to be promoted to the Premier League and 3 to be relegated and if not there will be “very messy” legal action.

Fans reacted after the EFL chairman reveals that July the 31st is the date the 2019/20 season must be completed by…

Cancel threw season ffs, why is football been considered more important than most other jobs which people have lost as result of covid19? Football is irrelevant

— Mackey (@Mackey1981) May 5, 2020

How many more times does he need to be told. pic.twitter.com/YpztuQxUNu

— Robert McArdle (@robmcardle17) May 5, 2020

So the EFL season must recommence no later than 8th June???… Teams will need 3-4 weeks back in training brings that to next week….

Not a chance. https://t.co/cEfieaoo6R

— Craig Perkins (@CraigPerkins17) May 5, 2020

Just declare the season null and void

— Yellowrose33 (@Winterangel33) May 5, 2020

The country is still on lock down let alone play football atm, France has declared No sport until at least September, we have had the virus worse in the U.K. imagine the insurance issues that would be involved alone

— Nigel J Moore ⚽️ (@Moorski7) May 5, 2020

As much as I want life to go back to normal ASAP, it is pointless trying to bring things like football back in when we aren’t anywhere near out of the woods yet.

— Jonny Lambert (@lambo_82) May 5, 2020