Peterborough United supporters’ groups want EFL heads to roll after ‘dubious and appalling’ outcome of the League One season

From Marco Graziano, chairman of the Posh Supporters Trust...

The Posh Supporters Trust (PST) are compelled to comment on the EFL-sponsored decision to curtail the League 1 season. Fans across the football spectrum are appalled by the outcome to curtail the 2019/20 professional football season.

It is the opinion of the Trust, which is echoed by the majority of Posh supporters, that the leadership and governance of the EFL is not fit for purpose and that Rick Parry, the chairman of the EFL should stand down for failing in his duty to lead the professional football season to a full conclusion.

The criticisms which form the basis of this call for Rick Parry to stand down are as follows:

* Lack of effective administration, leading to delay after delay, effectively minimising a re-start by knowingly winding down the clock.

* The lack of congruence between the EFL stated intent to ‘play the season out’ and it’s inactions and dithering which corrupted any chance of ‘playing out the season’.

* Sponsoring a free for all where ‘club was set against club’ effectively allowing clubs to fight it out amongst themselves, with the predicted mayhem and discord between clubs. The EFL’s effective abstention from the decision-making process will prove, in the end, to be toxic for years to come.

* An utterly ridiculous situation where clubs where asked to present ideas while it was known that individual club self-interest sponsored by the EFL would trump any alternative option, in this regard the process was completely fake and only served to delay the inevitable pre-determined EFL preference for the over simplified PPG method.

There were no intellectually rigorous options proposed by the EFL. Instead the EFL helped clubs avoid their responsibilities by allowing them to protect themselves against the interests of the fans, the League structure and fellow clubs.

The PST made its own proposals to the EFL weeks before the final vote. In these proposals, if clubs voted for curtailment then the League had to carry forward their position and points from this season to next season, effectively freezing this season and consolidating results with next season.

This would have been fair to everyone and respected what actually happened on the pitch in the 2019/20 season. Our proposal was clear, no erasing of the real results and no re-writing history.

League 1 was a very special case and was screaming out for a different solution but alas the fans have been failed by the wholly inept EFL and its leadership.

All that remains from this sorry state of affairs is a sense of loss mixed with anger and frustration. The EFL will not be welcomed any time soon by Posh fans.

From the commitee of the Peterborough Independent Supporters Association (PISA).

While we are not surprised by the outcome of the vote we are as devastated and disappointed as the owners, our members and all the fans of our football club.

There are questions galore to ask about the EFL, their actions, their inaction, their prevarication, their lack of leadership and their admin mistakes that led to delay after delay.

We have no confidence whatsoever that they will feel fit to explain themselves but they should, indeed, heads should roll at the top of this disgraced organisation.

Our football club has, in our opinion acted honourably, and in the right way, however, they have been truly led down the garden path by Rick Parry stating the EFL were committed to ‘playing the season out’.

On the strength of that our owners took the decision not to furlough the staff at Peterborough United at great expense.

The EFL is one group, the theory behind it is that it is run by the clubs for the clubs.

However, we then see the ‘leadership’ allowing clubs to fight amongst themselves and they allow edeach division to vote individually with the predicted mayhem.

League 2 was pretty much sorted regarding promotion and the play offs, but relegation was still relatively tight and it was pretty obvious the vote would be to scrap the season.

Equally it was to be expected that the Championship would vote to play on. There is serious money at stake and when the probable division winners Leeds stated alongside WBA that they were happy to play out the campaign the other clubs were bound to follow.

League 1 though was a completely different story with up to a dozen clubs in the mix.

So, what did Mr Parry and his colleagues do?

They did not arrange a voting system as quick as they did with the division below.

When they did so they complicated things to such an extent that clubs needed more time.

They put some serious panic in the minds of some of the smaller clubs and in our opinion effectively told them that there was no money to be had when it has since become clear that there was a loan at very reasonable rates of £220 million which they chose not to take up.

They then allowed vastly over-estimated numbers to be thrown around of the Covid medical tests which further panicked numerous clubs.

Eventually their prevarication tactics worked and it became obvious that time was against the playing out of the remaining matches which in our opinion was always the plan.

Their announcement about how the calculations would be made to decide who was going to compete in the play-offs was typically muddled and of course resulted in one club who were showing relegation form in the six matches before shutdown getting automatic promotion and another who had an even worse run of form over the last 14 games shooting up from 8th to 3rd!

Incredibly the EFL had even more tricks up their sleeves.

Announcing the date of the final vote with various options suggested by some clubs which we were told would be a free vote (by the clubs for the clubs) it was then reported and confirmed that the EFL had arranged for medical tests to be carried out at 4 clubs.

Miraculously these 4 clubs turned out to be the very clubs that became the 4 involved in the play offs! You really could not make it up.

There are very many other things that could be pointed out by ourselves as to why the final decisions were flawed at best, dubious to be kind and much worse if one was of that mindset.

We would like to let it be known that PISA appreciates the stance that the owners took and sincerely hope that next season sees a fair competition, a successful campaign for our football club and a chance that if we were to win the division we could deny anyone from the EFL an invite to come to London Rd to present the trophy.