Sheffield Wednesday’s Yorkshire rivals in battle over how season should end

Sheffield Wednesday boss Garry Monk said this week that all 24 second-tier managers were unanimous in their belief that the season should be completed on the field.

But that was after Hull vice-chairman Ehab Allam had written to the league claiming it should be cancelled. This week the EFL set out a recommendation on how the season should end if it is not possible to play the season out, with relegation and promotion in place and the table decided on points-per-game.

All 24 clubs would vote on the proposal, with 13 votes needed in favour to see it enacted.

Hull boss Grant McCann – who himself entered into a war of words with Monk over the hospitality offered to the Tigers during their Hillsborough visit in January – has seen his side take two points from 33 available since that 1-0 win and sit two points above the relegation zone.

It’s a series of events not lost on Leeds CEO Angus Kinnear, who writing in the Yorkshire Evening Post yesterday said: “If Leeds United wanted to be opportunist we could have seized on this ‘point per game’ commitment to push for an early curtailment in concert with some already very vocal self-interests.

“However, our intention has always been to do all we can to complete this season where we started it – on the pitch.”

The Star understands that Wednesday, too, favour the completion of the season despite their own downturn in league form. The Owls are 15th, eight points from the dropzone.

A report in The Telegraph reveals that Allam has sent a second letter to EFL chief Rick Parry, claiming the integrity of the competition would be harmed should the league’s proposal come to fruition.

Allam wrote: “Without any guarantee that all remaining fixtures will be played if the season recommences, Championship clubs are, in effect, being asked to agree to a game of pass the parcel in which they can achieve/miss out on promotion or avoid/suffer relegation, if the music were to stop at an indeterminable/arbitrary point in time.

“I continue to strongly believe that Championship clubs are being exposed to entirely unnecessary legal and financial risks (and forced to overlook the health and safety concerns that exist) as a result of the inappropriate haste with which clubs are being encouraged to return to training by the EFL.

“This has the potential to fundamentally undermine a testing regime which you have stated is needed to underpin a safe return and, in the event that matches are ever played, expose the players and staff of other Championship clubs (who have adopted a more rigorous approach to testing via club medical personnel or third party agencies) to unnecessary and inappropriate risks.

“It would clearly be inappropriate for players to carry out their own doping-control tests and yet the EFL has approved a process which allows players to test themselves for a virus that has serious/life-threatening consequences.”