Plans to hold a historic summit of all top flight clubs to effectively end the season were dramatically put on hold - incase the Scottish government makes the decision for them on Tuesday.
Record Sport reported that as many as nine Premiership clubs are now on the verge of conceding that the current campaign cannot be played to a finish - and asking the SPFL board to officially crown Celtic champions.
That was expected to be confirmed today during a conference call involving the top 12 but at 4pm on Monday, hosts Aberdeen moved to postpone the meeting for up to 48 hours - to await the outcome of today’s crisis talks between the game’s governing bodies and Holyood.
A source told us: “It was decided there was little point in asking clubs what they want to do about ending the current season at the same time as the SPFL and the SFA are speaking with the government.
“It could well be that the medical advice and the government’s position may give our clubs no real choice in the matter of deciding whether this season can restart or not. The meeting of the Premiership clubs is now most likely to go ahead on Wednesday or Thursday.”
The scrapped emergency discussions had been scheduled since Friday’s initial meeting, with clubs given the weekend to consider their official positions in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown which has plunged Scottish football into a financial crisis of its own
Scottish football crisis
Five of the country’s leading 12 clubs declared during Friday’s a conference call that they will not have enough players still under contract to enable them to fulfil their outstanding fixtures if the 2019/20 campaign was to be restarted and played to a finish over the summer.
We can further reveal that those five clubs are, in fact, Kilmarnock, Motherwell, Ross County, Hamilton and St Mirren - and all of them are likely to call for the season to be brought to and.
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But that will have to wait until SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell and his SPFL counterpart Neil Doncaster hold a separate video meeting today with the minister for public health, sport and wellbeing Joe Fitzpatrick as they look to thrash out a safe way for the game to be brought out of cold storage before a vaccination has been discovered for Covid-19.
And there are growing fears that Holyrood may be more reluctant than the UK government to help sport be fast-tracked back into a phased return.
Maxwell and Doncaster will front the talks - along with the heads of the SRU, SportScotland and Scottish Racing.
While Downing Street has launched Project Restart in an effort to get football in England back up and running, some Scottish clubs are growing increasingly concerned that the SNP government could adopt a less sympathetic approach to the return of major sporting events.
And that could lead to the SFA asking for an emergency cash bail out from Holyrood if football in this country remains shut down for the long haul.
A close source told us last night: “The two key ares which have to be explored are the financial costs of the lock down and how we go about getting football back safely.
“While the Scottish government has every right to diverge from UK policy if it so wishes, any such divergence will carry its own additional costs. In that case, Scottish football would need financial support.”
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But even if football is given the green light to prepare for a return the delayed meeting of the Premiership clubs could all but end the current campaign if enough of them are now convinced that the remaining fixtures have no chance of being completed before next season can begin.
And a source close to those discussions said: “There could be 10 clubs all saying the same thing by the time the conference call finally does take place.
“The agenda for these talks has been made clear. Ending season 19/20 and the pain of having to at least begin season 20/21 behind closed doors. Reconstruction will also feature but we need to get through all of that and then get on with the job of trying to save Scottish football before clubs start going to the wall.
“As much as everyone wants to get all this season’s games played the reality is that it’s simply not going to be possible to do that without doing serious damage to next season’s schedule.
“And that schedule is going to be difficult enough to work out in any case given all the uncertainty about when and how football matches will be allowed to take place in Scotland.”