Crystal Palace Chairman Steve Parish Wants to 'Crown Liverpool Champions' & Maintain Sporting Integrity
Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has revealed he wants to see Liverpool crowned champions after coming out in favour of plans to restart the Premier League.
Liverpool were 25 points ahead of Manchester City at the top of the table before football was suspended in March following the coronavirus outbreak. Jürgen Klopp's side only need six points from their remaining nine games to secure their first title since 1990.
The Premier League have revealed plans for a resumption of the competition under the moniker 'Project Restart', with the suggestion that fixtures are played at neutral venues to conclude the campaign.
Parish, after addressing the issues surrounding these proposals and the severity of the situation, explained his desire to restart the Premier League, writing in the Sunday Times: "Isn’t it all just about the money? Well, not entirely. I want to complete the competition for reasons of sporting integrity.
"I want to crown Liverpool champions and give every other club a fair crack at the best league position they can achieve."
Government officials in France took a different approach to their English counterparts when it was recently decided that there will be no football played in the country until August at the earliest, bringing both the Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 seasons to an abrupt end, although Paris Saint-Germain were still named champions.
The unthinkable has happened in France and the Ligue 1 season has been cancelled, with three options on the table to decide the title, relegation, and European qualification.
— 90min (@90min_Football) April 29, 2020
But how would those potential outcomes look if the same happened in the Premier League? ?
Parish elaborated on his distaste for the complications which would follow should the Premier League not return.
"I certainly don’t want to have difficult conversations about curtailing, voiding and points per game," he added. "The ramifications of each are complex and could involve legal challenges that run on for months, if not years.
"But, yes, it is partly about the money. And we should all care about the money. I’ll tell you why. Nobody wins if the Premier League receives less money. Nobody. We are already facing losses no one can quantify — and if we don’t finish the season we are entering uncharted waters.
"Football is one of the most efficient tax-generating industries in Britain: we pay the players a lot but 50 per cent goes straight back into the public purse. Overall we pay about £3.3 billion in tax every year and it is the Premier League that largely funds the whole football pyramid."
