Cardiff City manager Neil Harris has suggested that he is confident that the EFL season will resume eventually and be played out to a conclusion, but also warned against the impacts that starting next season so soon after this one has finished could have on the players.

Harris, like the rest of the managers up and down the country, will be doing all they can to try and prepare for when the season does eventually resume, with the EFL having announced this week that the campaign will be suspended until at least the end of April.

Cardiff are one of the teams who are currently still in the mix of sides challenging to finish the season inside the Championship’s top six, with the Bluebirds currently sat in ninth place in the table just two points adrift of sixth-placed Preston North End, which means they have a realistic chance of the play-offs when the season does resume.

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Speaking to BBC Radio Wales, via Wales Online, Harris has revealed that he believes the season will eventually resume and be played to a conclusion, but he also suggested that if the season resumes and then the next one starts soon after it could have a real negative impact on player’s fitness.

He said: “We’ve been given a guideline that the season might start again on Saturday, May 2, so of course it’s important to be working towards that. But as we’ve seen that’s not set in stone at the moment.

"Things are so fast-moving and so changeable that that could be a month later.

"So we’re second-guessing things a little, but what we do know is that when the season does recommence - and it will - I’m extremely confident that this season will finish before the next one begins.

"Whenever that is, we’ll have to see. But it will finish and we have to make sure we’re ready for it. But we can’t keep training now individually, get back training as a group, play the games, finish one season and then have a week off before starting again.

"That will just lead to meltdown within players and squads come December and January. There has to be a rest and recuperation time between one season and the next."

The verdict

These are interesting comments from Harris, which suggests that the season will be completed and teams like Cardiff will be able to challenge for one of the places in the play-off places during the final nine matches of the season – and that is vitally important given the ramifications that not completing the season could have for clubs.

However, he has a real point that the EFL will need to carefully plan for what the impact of potentially finishing this season later on could have on teams heading into next season, which could mean that there will need to be an extended period for players to recover.

Given the amount of physical pressure that is placed on players over the course of a campaign, Harris is right to suggest that there could be the potential risk of players breaking down mid-way through next season, if they have been forced to start the new season soon after this one has been completed.

That could potentially have real knock-on effects for teams who will be aiming to both avoid relegation and battle it out for promotion next term, with Cardiff likely to be aiming to be one of the teams in the promotion mix if they do not go onto secure promotion this term.