The football family never really existed and when the EFL needed Winston Churchill they got Theresa May instead

Close family members don’t connive and conspire against each other.

Close family members don’t stab each other in the back and then dissemble about their logic.

Close family members don’t adopt an ‘every man for himself attitude’ while pretending to be supporting the greater good.

Football is, and always has been, a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world. It’s just never been as blatantly obvious than in the last three months when League One clubs have been on manoeuvres to secure fake promotions and cruelly relegate others while putting up smokescreens to disguise their true motivation. To make or save money, obviously.

Maybe I am doing the club chairman who recently appeared to claim that his vote to end the season was cast to help other clubs through a tough financial period a grave disservice. Maybe the extra £5 million or so his club will receive by hiding from the last nine games of the season and entering the Championship is just a happy, co-incidental outcome of his magnificent altruism.

Maybe I’m too cynical, but I doubt it because I know one club has just voted to end the season for others, while insisting on carrying on themselves. It’s just staggering this is allowed to happen. Sprting integrity has died along with a few reputations today.

I did have sympathy for the EFL, as well as the UK Government, when the coronavirus crisis took hold. It was a unique event which quickly wreaked havoc on normality.

But, just like Boris and his blunderers, the EFL response has been hopeless. It’s been slow, it’s been illogical and it’s going to take years to clear up the mess.

At least the Government play out their incompetence in public. All we have ever received from the EFL were wordy press statements designed as much to stave off the threat of legal action as to find solutions that were fair to all its member clubs.

Do they not see how crazy it looks that as one of their divisions is set to start up, two others are closing down?

Probably not as one press statement released today quotes EFL chairman Rick Parry thus: “Today’s outcome ensures that the League and its clubs remains as faithful as possible to the previously agreed regulations and that there is consistency in the approach adopted across the EFL in all divisions if required.”

Excuse me? You what mate? You’ve just ripped up your regulations so you can promote and relegate teams who have played more/less home/away games than others. The word ‘faithful’ has no place in that sentence.

And as for a ‘consistent approach’ one of your divisions is playing on, but two have decided to throw in the total. I’d hate to view what you see as inconsistent. Maybe telling clubs the season would continue so they kept players off furlough at considerable expense and then weeks later changing your mind? I’d call that inconsistent.

The ramifications of the EFL’s dithering and delay will be felt for years. Ill-feeling will linger on and off the pitch. Good luck to the EFL trying to repair the damage their own ineffectiveness has helped to cause.

It is of course easy to throw accusations of bias at me as my club is one of the biggest losers in this artificial end to the season, but the only argument I’ve seen against the Posh stance of wanting to complete the season is that our approach would be different if we were sitting in second which is as weak as an argument can get.

The people making this argument seem blissfully ignorant of how this exposes their own selfish positions.

Health and cost have proven to be excuses not reasons for giving up.

To suggest it’s fair to decide final positions with two months of the season still to be played is mind-bogglingly dumb. It’s an escape route if you’re second with a lot of hard games to come or if you’re going to sneak into the play-offs by avoiding lots of away matches. I do see that though.

And what a letdown Parry has been. When clubs needed a leader they found they had a mediator instead. The clubs needed Winston Churchill, but they got Theresa May who became a predictable walkover.

From the moment Parry sat in front of that Parliamentary committee last month and delivered a Doomsday scenario I feared the game was up for Posh and for EFL credibility.

Parry’s legacy will be the shambolic 2019-20 season when one of his divisions wanted to play and two didn’t. When clubs could vote to promote themselves and relegate others. Posh have been treated poorly, but Tranmere’s relegation is a far greater football crime.