View: Worrying report emerges about West Brom promotion bid if EFL copy Eredivisie
West Brom could be hit hard in the pocket if the EFL decide to follow in the footsteps of the Eredivisie and cancel the 2019/20 season.
Earlier this week, the Netherlands’ football governing bodies agreed to call an end to the Eredivisie season, meaning there’d be no winner, no one relegated and no one promoted from the second-tier.
Alan Pardew will no doubt be pleased about that with his club ADO Den Haag in a fight to avoid relegation before coronavirus led to the season being suspended.
However Pardew’s delight is no doubt something that West Brom fans will worry about because what if the FA, Premier League and EFL also do the same as the KNVB and scrap the season here and now?
According to the Mirror, it would lead to “catastrophic” financial ramifications for West Brom and Championship leaders Leeds, both of whom have occupied the automatic promotion spots almost all season and have a six-point gap between second and third-placed Fulham.
If Albion fail to win promotion they will be into the final year of their parachute payments and have already made drastic cuts to their spending since their relegation from the Premier League in 2018.
Mark Jenkins has done a good job of steadying the ship financially while Luke Dowling and Slaven Bilic have built a team of serious promotion contenders on quite a small budget.
But what of Albion’s big-name players and their big-earners if they are forced to spend another season in the second-tier?
The hopes of keeping manager Slaven Bilic are bound to take a blow with the Croat already being linked with Turkish giants Fenerbahce.
We hope this scenario doesn’t play out in England as it has done in the Netherlands.
It is painful enough not knowing the fate of the club’s season but not knowing what will happen with Bilic is excruciating.
In other West Brom news, Kevin Phillips has claimed this attacker has failed to live up to his billing at The Hawthorns.