JED Wallace wants this season to finish so all the emotion that has gone into it won’t be for nothing – and the Lions attacker insisted he would give up his summer holidays if it meant concluding the 2019-20 campaign.
All professional games in England are currently suspended until at least April 30 as the football authorities and the country resolve to tackle the Coronavirus crisis.
Millwall have play-off ambitions as they lie just two points off sixth with nine games left, and Wallace feels too much has gone into the campaign, for too many sides, to void the season now.
“This season has to finish, in my opinion,” Wallace insisted. “It’s absolutely not fair on the teams at the bottom and the teams like us. There are so many complicating factors.
“What happens if the season gets voided? Do teams like Cardiff get another year of [Premier League] parachute payments? If the season did end all the emotions that have gone through it – the atmosphere in the stadium when we beat Charlton, the atmosphere at Elland Road when Leeds beat us, staged a comeback – those moments then mean nothing. That’s what you play football for.
“My absolute worst scenario is the season is voided now. I would cancel all my holidays tomorrow, give up all my eight weeks off to get the season finished. That’s what I want to do.
“Especially being in the position we’re in, after the last result we had and the manager and players we have, we want to achieve something.
“I’m sure there are certain clubs in the division thinking, ‘if the season ends now that’s great for us’. But if you do achieve something you want to do it the right way. You want to be there after 46 games. If you’re down the bottom it’s not fair, and if you do go up you want to feel you’ve achieved something over the course of the whole season.
“Even though, in my opinion, Leeds and West Brom are the two best teams in the whole league, if they go up now people will be saying, ‘you didn’t do the whole season, it was Coronavirus year’.
“I think for everyone involved, emotionally and in terms of it being an equal playing ground, it’s only right to play out the whole season.
“Liverpool and Leeds fans are probably feeling the same as us. The one year we can sneak into the play-offs there’s a pandemic that stops us doing it.
“To be honest with you, I just don’t know what’s going on. I went for a run yesterday morning. I’m going for a run and thinking, ‘I really hope this means something’. That I’m keeping my fitness up before getting back into football and getting on with it.
“My overwhelming emotion is, ‘we can’t void the season, we can’t void the season’. I’ve not even thought about when we’re going to play the games, how we’re going to play the games, who’s going to be there. It’s just a fear they’re going to void it, which wouldn’t sit right with me. It wouldn’t be right.
“I just really hope the right decision is made for everyone. All my friends that I speak to in football are saying the same thing, they don’t want it voided. It just doesn’t seem to make much sense to do it.
“But ultimately the most important thing is people’s well-being.”
Image: Millwall FC