English Premier League club Norwich City director Stuart Webber has called for the resumption of football season in all the divisions and not only in Premier League. And if that cannot be made possible, he has asked for the relegation system to be scrapped.
“In my opinion, it needs to be settled on the pitch, not off the pitch. A big question we have around restarting is, it’s fine if we restart and three teams get relegated. We look at it as though we’re only six points off 16th rather than being adrift. But if we do (go down), that’s fine, because that’s where football should be played. Football should be played on a pitch and not in the boardroom,” Webber told Sky Sports as quoted by IANS.
“But the Championship has to restart and play all their games also. What we could not accept is a situation where we play out all our games, get relegated but then the Championship can’t play — because we don’t even know if the government are going to let them play — and then they automatically promote some teams who haven’t finished the season.
“It’s a bit like saying, we can’t complete the FA Cup, but we’re in the quarter-finals, we’ve beaten a Championship top-six team away, we’ve beaten two Premier League teams away, so does that mean we win the FA Cup then and qualify for Europe and we all get a medal, because the level of games we played were harder than the other teams left in the quarter-finals?
“That’s a really important sporting point — it needs to be settled on the pitch, both coming up or going down,” he added.
According to a report by the New York Times, along with Norwich, the other two teams in the relegation zone, namely AFC Bournemouth and Aston Villa, had earlier called for the relegation system to be waived off or this season be declared void.
However, the Premier League and the authorities of the 20 clubs have begun their preparation to make sure the league gets underway in June after the United Kingdom government gave the green light to the league to finish the season.
The representatives of all the 20 clubs held a video conference where they discussed the plans laid under ‘Project Restart’ which was initiated with aims to see Premier League making a return by June.