Culture secretary Oliver Dowden and FA chief executive Mark Bullingham are both hopeful that “some fans” will be able to return to football grounds at the start of the new season, which is currently pencilled in for September.

Speaking at yesterday’s daily Covid-19 briefing, Dowden said: “I would really hope that by the return of the new season we might be in a position whereby some fans could start to return to stadiums.

“I know that would be another important part of restoring the financial position of clubs.”

He added that the “outdoor element” of watching football meant that supporters could be allowed into stadia sooner than audiences are permitted to return to theatres and other indoor venues.

Bullingham told The Guardian that the FA takes a similar view: “When we look ahead to September, we are hoping we are in a very different situation than we are now as a country, and we hope at some point we can start having crowds back.

“We’re looking at loads of options; we’re even getting people to map out what traffic flows [of spectators] look like in stadia, explore what it could look like with one-metre, two-metre social distancing and so on.”

He added that app-based “digital passports” are under consideration, aimed at showing that supporters are not infected with Covid‑19 utilising the Government’s testing programme.

While a September start for 2020/21 is the current target - either behind closed doors or with the hoped-for limited crowd - a number of clubs in Leagues One and Two are understood to want to wait until supporters are able to attend games en masse, which is likely to be in the new year.

Photo: Action Images

Blue041273 added 20:16 - Jun 21 The whole game experience will change! No food or drinks! No banter with other fans! Impossible queues for the toilet! Social distancing will make it impossible to buy stuff from Planet Blue! But you can bet on Town chucking the game away week after week! Some things will never change!
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Linkboy13 added 22:21 - Jun 21 Looking at the standard of our defensive marking we've been social distancing for years.
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bobble added 08:15 - Jun 22 sounds like discrimination to me..
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Razor added 10:28 - Jun 22 This is probably a lot more of hot air and babble from Parry and his useless cohorts at the EFL. The way they have so far conducted things is a joke and fills me with no confidence at all. If there is a grain of truth in it however it should be easier in legues 1 and 2 to socially distance as dealing with a lot less people. Not everybody can afford a season ticket however so there should be a ballot system for some fans as well, say 2,000 at least.

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