Michael Beale explains how the SPL should be decided if the season cannot be completed

Celtic v Rangers - Ladbrokes Scottish Premiership
Celtic v Rangers - Ladbrokes Scottish Premiership

Rangers coach Michael Beale has given his solution on how to decide the final standings if football cannot be resumed again this season.

Currently, all the top leagues are postponed until April because of the Coronavirus pandemic.

There have been talks of awarding the title to Celtic because of their significant lead at the top. However, Rangers insist on playing all of the 38 games before deciding on the final standings.

Beale believes that if all the games cannot be played, the final standings should be decided from the results of the first round of the home and away matches between all 12 top-flight teams.

To simplify, he wants to decide the premiership based on the standings at the halfway point of the season.

He said (cited by Scottish Sun): “Unless the leagues can be split in a fair way, a league with less teams like Scotland can decide to not predict into the future – but go back to a point where each team has played each other twice and use that as a fair reference of the teams level over the equal part of the season. If the positions are the same as at that point I think it’s a fairer reference point as each team has played each other twice.”

Such a move would complicate matters even further because Rangers are yet to play their two games against St Johnstone. Celtic have played all 11 teams twice and they have 58 points.

Rangers currently have 56 points with the game against St Johnstone in their hand.

It will be interesting to see how this issue is solved in the coming weeks. The pandemic hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down just yet.

Resuming football from the start of April seems highly unlikely right now.

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