Football is on pause, at least for the meantime. Plans are being put into place and gears stepped up in preparation for a return of the beautiful game. Leeds United fans will be looking for a restart to confirm what will hopefully be a first return to the Premier League in 16 years. However, that all depends on the luck and fortune with a dash of decision-making added into the mix. Here the Mail Online mentions what could be a spanner in the works for the Whites.
Leeds United have tumbled and climbed since their Premier League relegation at the end of a dismal 2003/04 campaign. They fell to the depths of League One and a -15 start and have now climbed to the top of the Championship. The Whites have a seven-point cushion over Fulham who head the playoff-chasing pack. From this position, given their form and quality of opposition to face, fans would expect promotion.
However, there have been a number of ‘barriers’ erected in their way since COVID-19 closed down football. One of these has been verbalised with Premier League CEOs voicing concern that they would not vote for the Premier League’s ‘Project Restart’ plan if relegation was still on the agenda. That barrier was in place after notions that games in the Premier League would be behind closed doors and at neutral grounds.
When the 20 Premier League clubs voted that away, the next barrier erected was that relegation would stay but only if the Championship was completed and promotion not simply awarded. The clubs threatened with relegation wanted equality – they became known at the ‘Rebel Six’. Now the Mail Online’s Matt Hughes reports that there is a ‘Gang of Five’ Championship clubs who are “resolutely opposed to resuming the season.”
Three of these clubs are Yorkshire rivals of the Whites: Huddersfield, Barnsley, Sheffield Wednesday, Hull City and (more tenuously) Middlesbrough being the five teams that fit that bill. This quintet of clubs could hold a vital key to Lees United’s promotion hopes.
If the Premier League insist on some form of like-for-likeness (in that both campaigns should play out naturally), then the ‘Gang of Five’ could present the ‘Rebel Six’ with what they want – Premier League safety.
Imagine the ruckus if that is what happened? It would get ugly, very ugly indeed.
