You either play it out or you agree to end it

If they agree not to play any more matches (because they can't, in practice, complete the full number of home & away games) then the last match has been played. Season ends. Bottom three go down.

Now you can challenge that in court and say it's not fair to end the season. Fine. Court declares the season is still ongoing. How long before clubs run out of money tying to complete it? (and not just in the EPL, as the other leagues can't re-start until relegation is decided).

So if we assume season ends, the *default* is that it's the table as at the end of the season that applies. There's no caveat that you only relegate 3 clubs if all matches have been played.

But there are still a couple of teams with games in hand, so how do you resolve that? You come up with a form of PPG. If you want to try and be fairest, maybe you do a weighted home/away PPG. And if we [Bournemouth/Villa] think that's unfair? Well we could challenge it, but what does that achieve? Worst case it removes the PPG compromise and defaults to the table as it stood when the season ends.

"But minority shareholder rights! You can't decide relegation like that!" To challenge the decision it has to be unfairly prejudicial. Any decision is going to be prejudicial to someone. So it's looking at fairness *in all the commercial circumstances*. There is no decision that is going to be obviously fair to everyone. Here it's going to be more about finding the least unfair solution. Is it unfair to end the season and relegate a club without playing all matches? Deeply. Is it unfair to void the season and not crown Liverpool, or not let Sheff Utd into Europe? Deeply. Would it be unfair to clet Sheff Utd take that placing when another team might have caught them up? It's as equally unfair as not letting us play out our matches. To make things fair for us, you're making it equally unfair for someone else.

Oddly enough, I think we'd have a better chance of running that sort of argument if we tried to complete the league under some form of neutral venue/extra subs/quarantined staff scenario, as I think playing under those sorts of conditions is going to be less fair to the smaller/less resourced clubs, particular those with decent home records.

But ending the season and deciding final placings on a mathematical formula? You're going to have a bloody difficult job convincing a court that it would be fairer to give little old Norwich the benefit of the doubt that we'd have survived against all of the odds. And a court is unlikely to conclude that the only answer to resolving the difficulty of calculating a fair PPG is to just throw hands in the air and rule for no relegation (in the face of FA and EFL opposition).

I think there is more scope to argue these sorts of moral arguments in a 'commercial negotiation' (and threatening the hassle of litigation is a not insignificant weapon). But ultimately a court (well, arbitration for this) is going to be much more hard-nosed and just look at what the rules actually say, and how you can best apply them to the scenario we are now facing.

What they are unlikely to do is to imply some sort of mechanism that works for the unique scenario we find ourselves in now, but which wouldn't have been on anyone's radar in '92 or whenever they all drew up the rules. There were lots of lawyers involved drawing up these rules (eg EPL, FA, 22 clubs). For a term to be implied it has to be so obviously what the parties meant to draft, that's it's just common sense to include it. It's going some to say that they all obviously meant to draft it so that relegation could only happen if all matches in a season were played (in effect we'd be arguing that they meant to draft it such that if the very final match couldn't be played, the whole season is null?). Nor does business efficacy require it.

Relegation is baked into the entire football league structure. Three go down when the season ends. We either end the season or we don't. The final table stands unless we can agree a 'fairer' way of settling it.

That's the nub of it however much I wish it weren't.

Our only chance is if we can convince the FA to let relegation be scrapped this season. (but to avoid the inherent unfairness on clubs tilting for promotion, that might only work if the EPL is happy to expand)

And maybe we can play the violin to get some extra money from the EPL. Except that don't even have the money they thought they were going to have, so I wouldn't fancy our chances there.

Posted By: CWC, May 8, 14:42:31