Simon Jordan believes the Premier League season must be voided or football authorities in England run the risk of leaving themselves open to a ‘corporate manslaughter charge’.
The former Crystal Palace owner says it’s inconceivable for games to be played behind closed doors in the current climate, with the worldwide death toll from coronavirus currently standing at over 218,000.
Jordan doesn’t believe football bosses should be targeting a June return to action, saying it is simply too soon
Plans are in place for the Premier League to resume in June, but Jordan insists it is far too early to be even thinking about bringing football back.
“I think we are in a situation where the best case scenario in my view is that we lose the season,” Jordan told talkSPORT.
“Liverpool aren’t champions, Leeds aren’t promoted, Aston Villa aren’t relegated, Norwich aren’t relegated. We are really into that territory now.
“As much as I don’t want to be a doomsday merchant, we have got a disease we don’t have a vaccine for, while this isn’t a problem in everyone’s workplace, everyone isn’t spitting and kicking each other as footballers do.
“You cannot have a situation where a global sport of this magnitude has a player who becomes infected, which is an absolute inevitability because they are going to get infected until we find a vaccine.
“And what happens then, corporate manslaughter?”
Liverpool have been streets ahead of everyone this term – but could yet lose the title due to the coronavirus pandemic
Give COVID-19 the red card
The quicker we work together to stop coronavirus spreading, the sooner we can get back into the pubs, the gyms and stadiums and arenas to see live sport again
STAY AT HOME. Only leave for the following purposes:

  • to shop for basic essentials  only when you really need to
  • to do one form of exercise a day  such as a run, walk or cycle, alone or with other people you live with
  • for any medical need  for example, to visit a pharmacy or deliver essential supplies to a vulnerable person
  • to travel to and from work  but only where this is absolutely necessary

For more info and tips, visit the NHS website.
The government has also issued further detail on what we can do during lockdown.
Everyone should do what they can to stop coronavirus spreading.
Jordan believes COVID-19 will continue to linger around the UK for the next year.
He added: “Everything falls secondary to public health, players’ health and the health of people who work around the stadium and the health of players’ families because of the policing and management of how players are going to interact with COVID-19 in our eco-system.
“This is going to be there for another 12 months, until we work out what it does, how it does it and how we can find out some kind of methodology of how we can live with it. The challenge is what is going to change?
“Is COVID-19 going to go away in the next six weeks? Unlikely.
“If out of the clear blue sky, we have a contagion rate that drops, and we have a viral load in people which has been identified by scientists as being so slow that the RNS rate is 0.1 then possibly, but I think we are really challenged.
“Don’t make any decisions now. But the idea that suddenly we are going to switch the lights on in June to me is inconceivable.”