Liverpool guaranteed champions? What the latest FA decision means

The FA’s statement came on Thursday to try and offer further clarification about the future of the whole of English football.

You can read the full statement here but the big thing you need to know is this.

“The FA’s Rules and Regulations state that ‘the season shall terminate not later than the 1 June’ and ‘each competition shall, within the limit laid down by The FA, determine the length of its own playing season’.

“However, our Board has agreed for this limit to be extended indefinitely for the 2019-20 season in relation to professional football. Additionally, we've collectively agreed that the professional game in England will be further postponed until no earlier than Thursday 30 April.”

It sounds as if, at least for the time being, the FA is fully committed to finishing this season and therefore the idea of voiding this season is not in their thinking.

So unless the situation worsens or there are new developments the 2019-20 English football season will be finished.

Yes. Barring a historic collapse or, more likely, a complicating of the coronavirus situation.

Well Liverpool are 25 points clear and Manchester City have ten games left, so theoretically given the FA has said that the earliest we could resume is April 30 the earliest Liverpool could win the league is probably some point in early May.

UEFA are yet to issue any kind of clarification on the Champions League and Europa League but theoretically they could run parallel with domestic leagues as they do usually only everything will finish later.

Yes there are two important things to keep in mind here.

1) The coronavirus situation is unprecedented for everyone and things are changing all the time. The April 30 date seems very optimistic so expect that to change in the coming weeks and months.

2) All of the European leagues have said that they want to finish the season by June 30 so at some stage a tough decision is going to have to be made, whether that means reducing the number of games or just cancelling season.

It’s all well and good people saying they want to finish the leagues but this situation is bigger than sport and the ultimate decision may well be taken out of their hands.