Chelsea: Clubs further down the pyramid told to act like it all never happened

Some Chelsea fans half-seriously hope the 2019/20 season will be suspended without a champion, so as to prolong Liverpool’s wait for a title. For clubs like St. Neots Town far down the pyramid, any winner is better than pretending like the season to date never happened.

With the Premier League suspended and still no date for a resumption of games, the outcome of the league title hangs in the balance. Clearly, Liverpool were going to win their first ever Premier League title. However, a decision further down the Football Association pyramid has cast doubt over the chances of that actually happening.

As background, the first four tiers of the pyramid are taken by the clubs that play the game professionally. The Premier League sits proudly at the top of the pyramid, with the EFL Championship, League One and League Two taking the next three levels.

At semi-professional level the tier system carries on, however, tier 5 – the National League – becomes Step One. After this point the pyramid finally begins to fan out. The two leagues that feed into the National League – North and South – become Step 2 (tier 6) and so it continues down. The system is only defined down to tier 11 or in semi-professional terms step 7.

Right, that’s the boring stuff done.

As we at The Pride of London look to extend our range of writing beyond all things blue, we’re going to take a look at a club slightly lower than Chelsea in the football pyramid.

I say “we,” in the editorial sense, meaning me. Being UK-based and away from London I don’t get to as many Blues games as I’d like. My regular football fix comes from supporting the team local to me down in Step 4 of the system.

As such, our new heroes from the snappily titled BetVictor Southern League Central Division One, based in Cambridgeshire, are… drum roll… St. Neots Town FC. Come on you Saints!!!! In real terms, St. Neots are seven promotions away from playing Premier League football and – in dreamland – running out at Stamford Bridge some Saturday afternoon in the future.

Those fans that fail to look beyond the heights of professional football are, for sure, missing a trick. The competitive nature of any sportsman at any level is pretty much the same. The excitement of watching a live game of football, be it at Stamford Bridge or St Neots’ ground, the Premier Plus Stadium, are much closer than the distance between them in the pyramid would suggest.

For clubs below National Leagues North and South, the season has now been officially ended by the FA and all results expunged. In effect, all games prior to this point are null and void. There’ll be no promotions or relegations nor league champions. The season effectively never began. Hopefully the 2020/21 season will return on time and run its course as normal. However, it’s too early to predict anything at the moment.

We currently await a decision regarding the completion of the Premier League. We do know there’ll be no resumption until at least May. Whilst as Chelsea fans we may all be sniggering at the thought of Liverpool not getting their Premier League title, in the grand scheme of things it’s probably fair to say we’d gladly give them it if it would wipe out this virus that is enveloping the world.

Nothing other than how we deal with COVID-19 globally matters right now. Once this has all gone away, though, football teams like Chelsea and St Neots will carry on bringing both pain and pleasure to those that support and follow them.

In future articles we’ll look at how the two are not as far apart as their respective positions in the pyramid would suggest.