Andrew Smith: Here’s a solution to deciding league champions, relegation and promotion

Every game must be played if this season is to be valued historically - and here’s how

We won't be seeing league football in Scotland any time soon, despite Uefa's pronouncements. Picture: Craig Foy / SNS

Uefa’s response this week to the blanket shutdown of league football amounted, frankly, to a series of non-decision. Apart, of course, from postponing the Euros for a year. Yet, it was pathetically disingenuous for the European game’s governing body to give the impression that its magnanimous freeing up of June will create a window for leagues to be completed. To put a kilt on it, this was simply a case of kicking the Mitre Delta down the road.

As the Scottish FA has made plain, there is no chance of Covid-19 having been brought under control by June to allow for the staging of mass gatherings in football stadiums once more. This is a public health tragedy that is destined to prove profound and protracted. Best case, it is looking like it will be August before it is possible to resume playing games which, right now, seem so utterly irrelevant as normal life crumbles in frightening fashion.

Football, as Jurgen Klopp is fond of saying, is the most important of the least important things for so many of us, though. In that respect, football, even as it isn’t played, can still serve as a form of escapism. Attempting to work out the practicalities that would resolve just how champions, relegation and promotion are decided upon from the 2019-20 SPFL season is as good as any parlour game as we look to while away hours as we are social distancing.

If clarity on that front might appear as elusive as Atlantis, fear not as some can be provided. The season will not be voided, that is off the agenda entirely. The financial disaster that would be wrought from requiring to recompense season book holders, broadcasters and sponsors if essentially declaring this season did not happen makes it a non-starter.

Moves will be made to use current standings to decide final positions. It might appear too straightforward for these to be resisted, but they should be. If this season is to be valued historically as is warranted, every game still to be played must be.

The argument against such a stance is that it is now indisputable such a solution would disrupt next season. It seems a curious line to take. How can a campaign that is three-quarters completed be considered secondary to one in which no games have been played?

The number of proposals put forward as to how to navigate a path through the current predicament rival the stars in the sky. Few twinkle, though.

An admirable exception would appear to be the proposition articulated in some quarters that, whenever football does pick up again, the four leagues should be played to a finish. As many midweeks as possible should be utlised to squeeze in the eight/nine regulation league games remaining across the four divisions. These could be crammed into three weeks.

The play-offs would follow on immediately, in tandem with the Scottish Cup semi-final and final. Another two weeks.

After clearing away the confetti at Hampden and wherever else, the new season would begin a fortnight late. And the 2020-21 campaign would be contested without a winter break. That would claw back a fortnight. The League Cup could revert back to a knock-out tournament, a saving of three weeks on recent seasons.

In terms of the top flight, the further abridgement that would allow the next season to meet available timescales would be tweaking the format. The Premiership would still be a 12 club set-up, but the split would come after teams had played each other twice. This would be 22 games. The top six and the bottom six would then played each other a further twice (which would actually remove the imbalances that exist in the current structure) making for 32 games all in – a reduction of six games on the standard league season.

The condensing of the other three set-ups would come by playing full midweek cards on European dates. As the English Championship demonstrates, there is no rule debarring this scheduling.

The downside would be that teams in the Premiership bottom six would lose the income from one home game against Celtic or Rangers. On such a minor drawback the entire set-up cannot be allowed to revolve when we are in such testing times. Yet even here, there is a sticking plaster. For the financial distribution model could be altered to funnel greater prize money to the bottom six as compensation for the earlier split.

This plan is equitable, workable and circumvents entirely the intractable issues that would ensue from voiding the current season or ‘calling it’ as is. You know it makes sense Scottish football authorities.