Finishing the season would make sense, says Gary Lineker

Former Leicester City player and BBC Match of the Day host Gary Lineker believes that finishing the Premier League season would make sense.

With the number of COVID-19 cases only burgeoning in the UK, any possibility of football resuming after April 30 is next to zero.

The UEFA have come up with three plans to bring the league campaigns to a close as of now: a mid-May resumption, an early-June resumption and an end-of-June resumption.

However, not even an optimist would be of the opinion that any of these plans would hold relevance come June. Put another way, we are looking at a long, long period before normality is restored.

So we now have whispers that the Premier League are planning to end the campaign once each club has played 29 games.

Arsenal, Aston Villa, Manchester City and Sheffield United are the only clubs who fall short of that mark, meaning that we will only have two more matches and Leicester won’t be a part of any of them.

But Lineker does not quite deem that as a good idea and wants the campaign finished – whatever way it is possible.

Speaking to talkSPORT, he said:

"“I think ideally we’d like to finish the season, I think that would make sense.“But this whole situation is so fluid and much more important than anything, it’s difficult to know when it’s going to go away.“We could be able to play again by June, it might have calmed down enough, whether that will be behind doors, which is not really what football’s about, but it would help to finish the leagues.“That’s the thing everybody would want to happen, except perhaps some supporters who really don’t like Liverpool.“I think that would be the fairest thing.“Legally it would be easier right across the board if they could finish the league, whether it’s possible or not, I don’t know. When do they start again, in June, July, August?“The one thing I’ll say at the moment is the players are having their rest now and it’s not the rest they would want, it’s not the holiday they would want, but once they get back and have a couple of weeks training to start the season again, they certainly wouldn’t need another pre-season between the seasons.“Conceivably, if they get playing early enough, they can go immediately into next season.“It’s not the scenario we would want, but whether it will happen or not, who knows.”"

But we also cannot ignore the fact that the clubs fighting for survival – or even a European spot – will feel hard done by with all sorts of scenarios still possible.

So all things considered – even the financial repercussions – the only fair decision here would still be to void the season.

Of course, the PL’s brand will take a battering but then again, the clubs’ interests cannot be ignored.