Premier League clubs’ ludicrous ‘no relegation’ plan insults fans – but it would be good for Man Utd and Chelsea

EVER get the feeling you’re being patronised, football fans?

Ever get the feeling you’re being treated as useful idiots?

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Ever get the feeling that Premier League clubs are using your supposed desperation to watch any kind of football as an excuse to protect their self-interest?

Well, the idea being floated that the English top flight could resume without relegation really should convince you of it.

Because this ludicrous suggestion really does take you for mugs.

As if behind-closed-doors football isn’t going to be soulless enough without supporters.

As if players are not going to find it hard enough to raise themselves.

Many fear for the health of their families if they are asked to play next month while the threat of coronavirus remains substantial.

And even those keen to resume will struggle to raise themselves to play in an atmospheric vacuum.

Sports psychologists are already trying to help players prepare for fixtures which will feel like training games — as clubs fear the season being played out at testimonial pace.

But if you then took away most of the competitive interest from the remainder of the season, by abandoning relegation, fixtures would become even more sterile.

Do they honestly expect us to be enraptured by 92 fixtures, played out in empty, neutral venues, when we already know that Liverpool will win the thing and without any drama involving the six clubs in realistic relegation danger?

DESPERATE & BRAZEN

Brighton are leading this argument — with increasing support from fellow threatened clubs — saying current plans for “Project Restart” would threaten the “integrity’”of the competition.

The Seagulls argue that by playing one more “home” match than some relegation rivals at a neutral venue — rather than their own empty stadium — they are being disadvantaged, even though home advantage will be greatly reduced without supporters.

This really is desperate, brazen stuff.

It’s not as if the Premier League have suddenly proposed to relegate the three lowest clubs with avian nicknames (Norwich, Brighton and Newcastle, with Crystal Palace just escaping).

And if relegation were scrapped, there would be far less integrity about this season.

The only clubs with much to play for would be those competing for European spots — an issue already clouded by Manchester City’s appeal against a two-year Uefa ban.

Of those, Chelsea and Manchester United have four remaining fixtures against the bottom six, which would become easier should their opponents have nothing to play for.

Meanwhile, Sheffield United — just two points behind Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side — have only one game left against the bottom six.

So scrapping relegation would clearly disadvantage the Blades.

The reason why they are even intending to play all matches in neutral venues is because they believe supporters can’t be trusted not to congregate outside stadiums.

Apparently you’re either too stupid, bored or blindly obsessed with football not to hang about outside a ground rather than stay at home where you could watch with ease and in comfort.

And yes, there might be an issue for one or two matches when Liverpool have the chance to secure their first title in 30 years.

But for the remaining 90 or 91 fixtures, the threat to public order and health would be negligible.

Thousands of Paris Saint-Germain supporters did gather outside the Parc des Princes before the closed-doors Champions League clash with Borussia Dortmund in March.

But that was before the realities of this global pandemic — and the resulting lockdowns — hit home.

Nobody knew then what we know now — and the vast majority of football supporters are law-abiding citizens with functioning brains.

Anyway, that argument is probably lost in England, where football fans are always treated like idiots.

And so here we are with matches at neutral venues being used as a convenient excuse to scrap relegation.

Which would lead to what? No promotion for Leeds or West Brom, well-placed at the head of the Championship?

Or maybe the Premier League being extended to 22 or 23 teams next season — leaving either a lop-sided competition or the cramming of more matches into an overcrowded fixture list.

Many Premier League owners — and especially American ones, used to franchise systems in major sports — would privately love to scrap relegation for good.

And while that won’t happen, there must be a realisation that great relegation fights give the competition some of its most extraordinary storylines.

Leicester’s jailbreak under Nigel Pearson in 2014-15 led to the club’s miraculous title triumph the following season.

In 2008, Roy Hodgson’s Fulham were 2-0 down at Manchester City and mathematically “relegated” — but fought back to win that match and their final two fixtures to stay up, before reaching a European final two years later.

These are the sort of dramas that make us love the game.

Of course, we’d rather the season was completed, to avoid financial Armageddon.

But don’t insult us by expecting us to tune in for matches devoid of atmosphere or meaning.

KEV’S A KEEPER

IT’S no great shock that Kevin De Bruyne should tell a Belgian paper he will consider his Manchester City future if their two-year ban from European competition is upheld.

Despite his Milkybar Kid looks, De Bruyne turns 29 next month, so would be 31 when he next gets a chance to play in the Champions League if City fail to overturn their ban for breaching Uefa’s Financial Fair Play rules.

He will certainly not be the only City star thinking the same way.

De Bruyne is probably the most sublime footballer in the Premier League — a rare talent who is marvelled at by neutrals.

If he leaves our shores, presumably the FFP cheerleaders will be getting their pom-poms out to wave him off at the airport.

It would be a victory for grey accountancy over sporting beauty.

GAME SHOW

LOVE the suggestion that TV companies want to use behind-closed-doors fixtures to introduce “in-game” interviews with bosses and even players.

If this madcap idea actually happened, you can bet they would not scrap it once fans are allowed back in.

TV always wants to make itself an integral part of sport, rather than merely an observer.

It was the main driver behind the introduction of VAR — and hasn’t that been such a roaring success?

They will even enthusiastically welcome the system being extended to include managerial “challenges” — turning the world’s most successful sport into something resembling a game show.

Match-going fans will be expected to go along with increasing levels of farce.

Good game, good game. You’re such a better audience than last week.