Senior Bristol Rovers players and club management are understood to be furious after a voice note containing sensitive information regarding the future of the 2019/20 season was leaked to fans and rival players.
The 4mins 13secs recording, which Bristol Live has heard, is of Rovers winger Alex Rodman - the club’s PFA representative - outlining the main points from a recent meeting between the EFL, owners, fellow professionals and Gary Neville, who has been acting as a bridge between the PFA and league bosses.
The meetings are part of ongoing discussions between various EFL stakeholders to try and find a consensus as to how the 2019/20 should conclude with "player welfare" at the centre of all talks.
After first being placed in the players’ Whatsapp group to keep the squad in the loop in terms of developments surrounding the potential resumption of football, it is understood to have since been circulated around several other League clubs.
It’s unclear exactly how the information has got out, who has done it, why they have done so and if it was deliberate, but it will be a source of embarrassment to the club and the EFL.
Rovers have launched an internal investigation to try and establish the source of the leak.
In the message, Rodman details how the government announcement on May 7 regarding the next phase of the lockdown will help inform the EFL as to what happens next in the professional game.
A senior figure at the EFL is said to find it "optimistic" that the remaining matches of the 2019/20 season will re-start in June while games, when they do kick-off, are unlikely to be played in front of supporters until 2021, unless a vaccine can be found.
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It will require 66,000 tests for the season to be finished - although it’s unclear if this is just for League One, the EFL and/or the Premier League and below - and that these tests cannot take priority over any needed for NHS staff and keyworkers.
That seems an ambitious target, given the struggles the government has had with its testing policy, and with player welfare at the heart of discussions, provisions are also being made to end the campaign prematurely, scrap relegation and have three teams promoted from each league.
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The ending of contracts is a major point of discussion across football with June 30 the deadline and confusion as to what will happen if the season is continued beyond that date.
Clubs are not legally bound to extend contracts beyond that so, unless they are instructed otherwise, players will still become free agents on that date as the majority of EFL clubs can’t afford to do it.
Players are due severance pay if there are games in June, but should they then play beyond their contract expiring, into July, they would not received severance pay so would be playing for free.
In the voice recording, Rodman asks players to vote with a simple yes or no on whether they will be willing to play beyond June.
The EFL's publicly stated stance is that they are hoping to resume the campaign in June, whilst any decision over when fans will be allowed back into grounds will be subject to government guidelines.