BST column: Answers need to be found with football still stuck in limbo

Friday should have brought some clarity – but in the end it was in short supply.

League Two, where the table is relatively ‘clean’, decided that long-time survival was more important than trying to finish this campaign and voted to end things as they stand.

However the word ‘end’ here is something of a misnomer; the three automatic promotion places seem to be settled and the four clubs who would contest the play-offs seem clear.

How and when those play-offs would be played remains unsettled, and poor old Stevenage know that they are destined to finish bottom – but not whether they will go down.

All this has consequences for the National League, where Barrow do not know whether they will be crowned champions.

Harrogate look destined not to have the chance to catch them but are no clearer about whether two clubs will go up as would be customary.

Don’t forget, the EFL still has the ‘Bury problem’ to solve too. It looks like a mess – because it is.

Pity poor Carol Shanahan, who is chair at Port Vale.

Her club sits one place and one point outside the play-offs but she voted to end the season for the sake of the division as a whole.

Owners like her deserve better leadership from the top than they are getting.

League One, if anything, is worse, mainly because how you end the season has a direct bearing on who gets to contest the play-offs.

Wycombe Wanderers, for instance, currently sit in eighth place, but if the league applies a points per game rule to the final places, they would shoot up to third.

There seems to be no unanimity in the division at all about what is the fair way to go.

You have to give Ipswich Town some marks for ingenuity, as they reportedly have proposed that everyone down to the current 10th place should contest a specially extended play-off.

Have a guess where they currently sit?

We have been highly critical of the EFL in the past, and with good reason, but it is only right that we should acknowledge the efforts that they are making.

There has been a lot of dialogue with clubs, and communication with the wider world is undoubtedly far better than it was under Shaun Harvey.

But there is still a palpable sense of paralysis at the top of the English game, and a sense that money counts for far too much, with the TV broadcasters continuing to wield much of the influence over what happens next.

We should not forget that, ultimately, one of the things at stake here is the physical health and safety of players, coaching staff, club employees and indeed anyone who takes the decision to attend a football match before they have been vaccinated against the virus.

This has long since stopped being just about a game.

That sobering thought notwithstanding, the clubs continue to be in a strange form of limbo.

As things stand, players are being asked to stay as fit as they can – but have no firm date to resume formal training.

Many of them do not have contracts for more than a few more weeks and thus, no certainty about whether they will be in a job when the new campaign eventually gets underway.

Managers cannot plan as well as they would like, especially those who do not know which division they will be competing in.

This, for once, is not something we have to worry about, at least.

Getting ready to start again will not be straightforward on any level.

Staff will have to come off furlough, briefing on new protocols for allowing people to meet one another will have to be given, staff will need some training on what is advisable and what isn’t.

None of this will happen by accident – and club staff will have to work very hard to ensure that it happens at all.