'It's harder to see the season finishing', admits Thomas

It is becoming increasingly difficult to see how the 2019/20 Sky Bet League Two season can be played to a conclusion, admits Cobblers chairman Kelvin Thomas.

Despite the best efforts of the EFL, Premier League and FA, the season remains on hold with no viable solutions forthcoming as yet. The entire country remains on lockdown for at least another two weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Even when the lockdown does end, social distancing is likely to continue for a while yet and until those measures are relaxed fans will not be allowed into stadiums.

Thomas feels the general feeling is still to finish the season but that simply might not be possible for a variety of reasons.

"My view has changed a little bit," said Thomas when speaking to Ian Abrahams from TalkSPORT. "And I think it'll probably change again in a week's time.

"The longer lockdown goes on, it becomes harder to see the season finishing. And then you've got decisions around next season and whether or not you impact next season.

"The first barrier you've got to get through is: is it safe for the players to be playing? And if you get through that, then you start talking about how long social distancing will be in place.

"We just don't know. It's easy to say we should just finish the season and carry on but we don't know what we're facing over the next few months.

"We have to make sure we do all the appropriate modelling and make sure we listen to the government guidelines so we're prepared to get going again.

"I think everyone's number one goal is still to finish the season and ideally we do it with fans in the ground but the chances of that happening are now very, very slim.

"The realist in me says there's no chance of that and then it's about how you finish the season, how you keep players safe, how you schedule it and also the player contract situation.

"It's going to be decided by the virus and the government but if you don't finish it, there are other problems - who goes up? Who goes down? Who gets the title? Do you only promote teams and not relegate them? I don't know what the solution is.

"Purely from a selfish position, we're in the play-offs and we want a chance of getting promoted but there's always going to be self-interest and the situation also has tremendous legal implications, especially in the Championship where there's the big prize of the Premier League.

"I think this situation will change football in general and there's an argument that football needed a reset. We have to make it more sustainable and bring it back into the real world."