[SALTERGATE]

English Football League: No fans at games until 2021, according to leaked recording - https://www.bbc.co.u...otball/52493649

[Tha Knows...]

If theres a declaration that no games will be played with fans in stadiums til January it will make ST sales a bit iffy

[Westbars Spireite]

Spire-Power, on 30 April 2020 - 10:01 PM, said:

If theres a declaration that no games will be played with fans in stadiums til January it will make ST sales a bit iffy

It will make them non-existent until the time a firm date can be given and clubs have a product to sell.

[moondog]

We've now voted to cancel the National League play offs

[dim view]

moondog, on 01 May 2020 - 07:54 AM, said:

We've now voted to cancel the National League play offs

Just got this...

Premier league to return in June.
All games to be played at St Georges Park.
World cup format of 2/3 games a day.
All will be televised live.

All teams r now sorting hotels around the area for 8 wk period. All will isolate in hotels between games and tested every day.
Theres a meeting tomorrow between premier league and government to approve this.

[azul]

moondog, on 01 May 2020 - 07:54 AM, said:

We've now voted to cancel the National League play offs

Just to pee the Pies off?

[moondog]

azul, on 01 May 2020 - 02:13 PM, said:

Just to pee the Pies off?

You would need to ask the 65 fans who voted for that, I did because I think we should have closure not to spite them

[CFC91]

dim view, on 01 May 2020 - 01:35 PM, said:

Just got this...

Premier league to return in June.
All games to be played at St Georges Park.
World cup format of 2/3 games a day.
All will be televised live.

All teams r now sorting hotels around the area for 8 wk period. All will isolate in hotels between games and tested every day.
Theres a meeting tomorrow between premier league and government to approve this.

The meetings today and if very much dependant on the governments testing plan and them relaxing lockdown conditions. Both which I think are showstoppers. 8th June still very ambitious to me

[sophocles]

CFC91, on 01 May 2020 - 04:13 PM, said:

The meetings today and if very much dependant on the governments testing plan and them relaxing lockdown conditions. Both which I think are showstoppers. 8th June still very ambitious to me

Not so much 'ambitious' as 'will never happen ' IMO.

[SALTERGATE]

https://www.bbc.co.u...otball/52505712

[azul]

moondog, on 01 May 2020 - 03:48 PM, said:

You would need to ask the 65 fans who voted for that, I did because I think we should have closure not to spite them

I voted to pee the Pies off🤥

[moondog]

Non-League clubs plagued by even more spin and uncertainty than the elite


https://theathletic....-shared-article

[spireitetoo]

I don't think there should be promotion/relegation either, there was nothing guaranteed in this league, barrows lead at the top was coming down, chorley looked to be going, but other than them, any of the next 10 were in danger,.. Same goes for the football league upto and including the championship, all were/are too close to call about promotion, other than 1 or 2 teams relegation placed teams are not the certs for the drop, so for me, null and void is the only way to go, even if the prem finish, it would have to be a no relegation season... And let's face it, it will finish as the money invested in sponsorship etc in that league is just obscene,..

[Westbars Spireite]

Not many of us will be able to read that.

[moondog]

Westbars Spireite, on 02 May 2020 - 07:52 AM, said:

Not many of us will be able to read that.

Sorry as a link was offered I thought it was open.



Non-League clubs plagued by even more spin and uncertainty than the elite


By Jack Pitt-Brooke and Stuart James 4h ago 2
For the last seven weeks, non-League clubs have been dealing with a problem they never thought they would have to face: how do you pay your players and staff with no income, and no idea when your next game is going to be?

This week, clubs had to pay their last wage bill of the season, which they would not have been able to do without a mass furloughing of players and use of the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Many non-League players’ contracts expire this weekend, at the scheduled end of the season. But with the National League’s season having been ended early, clubs are now left wondering how they will assemble a squad for next season, whenever that starts.

When non-League football was suspended in mid-March, National League chief executive Michael Tattersall warned The Athletic that the league “need(ed) an intervention” as its 68 clubs would see their revenues fall to zero. The league wanted a £17 million package — £250,000 for each club — to cover its costs for the rest of the season.

No such assistance ever arrived from the government or the football authorities. The Premier League announced in early April that it would be providing £125 million to help EFL and National League clubs but that was just an advance on money that was already coming to them in September and heavily weighted towards the higher divisions. The National League as a whole received £2 million of that £125 million. Its top-flight clubs got £58,000 each and those in the National League South and North just over £13,000 each.

“The Premier League announcement is the most despicable piece of spin I have seen in this whole process,” Dulwich Hamlet chairman Ben Clasper says. “It was just everyone’s money coming early. It is an utterly pointless and futile exercise. It basically means no one in the game, from the Premier League or the FA, can provide any funds to the non-League system. The FA have done nothing. They are completely lawyered-up and they’re in a defensive position, solely trying to protect their commercial revenue. 100 per cent of their resources have had to go on that, which means zero resources have been available to fulfil their obligations as the regulatory and governing body.”

While there was no specific government support for non-League football either, clubs beyond League Two have been able to take advantage of government schemes. Most non-League clubs have furloughed their players and plenty of non-playing staff, too. The recent arrival of job retention scheme payments have been crucial to clubs being able to meet their payroll obligations this week.

“The government did nothing for football but in fairness to them, their nationwide schemes have been invaluable,” Clasper says. “The job retention scheme is the difference between life and death for clubs. I cannot put it stronger than that. Of our losses, it will cover more than half. It gets us a long, long way there. So while the government did not have a specific football-related answer, they did at least have one that was applicable to football clubs.”

Clubs have also used the government’s “Time to Pay” scheme to defer their recent PAYE payments as well as the VAT bill that was due in early May, meaning that the financial disasters many were expecting at the ends of March and then April has been averted. If those payments can be deferred into 2021, when football is expected to have returned, most clubs will be able to cope.

But while a final decision is reached on whether to hold play-offs to determine promotion and relegation, the uncertainty facing National League clubs runs even deeper. Nobody has a clue what is going to happen next.

Under normal circumstances, the 2020-21 season would begin in early August but that is only three months away. And clubs know the realities of the public lockdown and social distancing measures mean starting that soon will be difficult. Playing games behind closed doors — as the Premier League intends to do — is not financially viable at a level where the vast majority of all income comes from match-going fans, be that in the form of gate receipts or takings at the bar. Nor is the suggestion that crowds could be capped at, say, 500 people. With all levels of football currently in the dark about when fans can attend games next season, non-League has no better idea than anyone else.

But this raises the problem of how clubs can retain a squad of players for next season whenever that would be. While the richest National League teams do have players on full-time 52-week contracts, just like in the professional four divisions, that’s the exception rather than the rule. Most non-League clubs have players on 38 or 44-week deals, running from early August to early May. Such contracts will expire this weekend and under normal circumstances, clubs would be asked to submit their ‘”retained list” to the FA this week.

When the FA wrote to non-League clubs earlier this week, it said they had until May 9, next Saturday, to decide which players they wanted to retain “on the same or not less favourable terms as the player’s current contract”. Most clubs will be especially keen to retain their under-24 players — those for whom they would be entitled to compensation were they to join another club.

But there was also a difference in the FA’s letter, acknowledging the uncertainty about when non-League football will start again. The FA told the clubs that they can change the payment start date of players’ 2020-21 contracts to “the first League or Cup match of the club’s first team in the 2020-21 season” or a date soon before that. That would allow clubs to retain players for a squad for next season without being obliged to start paying them this summer before there is the prospect of any football. There is a view, however, that some players would be unwilling to accept contracts containing no guarantees of payment for months into the future.

“The problem is, if everyone is fighting a rearguard action, who is looking out for everyone else?” asks Dulwich Hamlet’s Clasper. “That’s what’s happened. That’s why you’ve got clubs at war with players. It’s down to a lack of trust and everyone trying to protect their position.”

But there is hope that, whenever the football restarts, clubs will be ready to re-open.

“If the call comes today telling me there is no 2020-21 season, as long as HMRC don’t come knocking demanding all the revenue, we will be in a good position,” says Clasper, “whether it’s August, or next January or next September. It has taken lots of hard slog to do it, with no help from the football authorities.”

[SALTERGATE]

Until the hospitality sector is 100% back up and running I don't see the point in football restarting.

[Tha Knows...]

moondog, on 01 May 2020 - 07:54 AM, said:

We've now voted to cancel the National League play offs

Have they been cancelled yet?

[Westbars Spireite]

SALTERGATE, on 02 May 2020 - 10:59 AM, said:

Until the hospitality sector is 100% back up and running I don't see the point in football restarting.

Premier League football can and probably will be played behind closed doors in clinical surroundings to ensure the ‘product’ can be sold and contractual obligations can be met.

At our level I see no point playing behind closed doors even if it was financially viable somehow for clubs to pay contracted players without any normal income streams. If that means waiting to start the season in some form in December/January when hopefully genuine normality has returned then so be it.

[calvin plummers socks]

Westbars Spireite, on 02 May 2020 - 11:44 AM, said:

Premier League football can and probably will be played behind closed doors in clinical surroundings to ensure the ‘product’ can be sold and contractual obligations can be met.

At our level I see no point playing behind closed doors even if it was financially viable somehow for clubs to pay contracted players without any normal income streams. If that means waiting to start the season in some form in December/January when hopefully genuine normality has returned then so be it.

Players I don’t think want to play, medical teams def don’t want teams to play, UEFA don’t want it ...... yet it will prob happen!

[moondog]

Spire-Power, on 02 May 2020 - 11:34 AM, said:

Have they been cancelled yet?

No news as yet but all the votes had to be in yesterday by noon so they will know what the clubs think