SPFL line up showdown summit as Hearts Championship talks drag on for THREE hours

Scotland’s 10 second tier clubs held mammoth meeting on Monday as Ann Budge prepares to show her hand.

League bosses are set to call an emergency board meeting in the next 48 hours to discuss the next step in the crisis facing Hearts.

Record Sport understands SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster will call the meeting on Wednesday or Thursday of this week after another dramatic day of video conference calls on Monday pushed the relegated Tynecastle club closer to a nightmare scenario of being locked out of football’s big restart.

All 10 Championship clubs met online for more than three hours into the afternoon as they attempt to thrash out a way for Scotland’s second tier to survive the coronavirus pandemic.

And, as we revealed on Sunday night, the majority of them remain resigned to being unable to afford to start the season behind closed doors.

A number of them do believe, however, the season can begin as soon as a the government allows a percentage of fans to get back into their grounds. And they are hopeful that could see the Championship slowly get back to business by October or November.

Sign up to our Record Sport newsletter

Get all the latest Sports news sent straight to your Inbox every day by signing up to our newsletter.

We cover every morsel of information regarding your favourite club in the form of articles, videos and podcasts.

The newsletter will arrive every day at 12pm, giving you a round up of the best stories we've covered that in the last 24 hours.

To sign up, simply enter your email address into the link here.

But Record Sport can also reveal the safe return of supporters has not even reached the discussion stage as football and Holyrood attempt to agree on a potential pathway out of the other side of the Covid-19 lockdown.

Those conversations will gather pace on Tuesday when Scottish football’s Joint Response Group officially hand over to government an action plan, in which detailed proposals as to how to get the national sport back up and running will be mapped out.

But, while these phased stages will centre around how players can get back to training and then return to playing matches behind closed doors, there is no plan for how and when supporters might be allowed back in through the turnstiles.

A Championship representative said: “The clubs had a good, productive conversation and we all want to find a solution to the obvious problems we face in starting next season.

“None of us think it’s a good idea to shut the division down until the new year. But, at the same time, there’s a realisation that a large number of the clubs will be in no position to play on behind closed doors. 

“The feeling is, if we can get to a point when maybe 25 per cent of the stadia will be open to supporters, then we will be able to play. The hope is that could perhaps come some time by October or November but there’s obviously  so much uncertainty at this time.”

But that will do little to ease anxiety levels surrounding Hearts, following the controversial decision to relegate them from the top flight without completing season’s 2019/20 fixtures.

Owner Ann Budge had been expected to circulated a plan for league reconstruction following Monday’s discussions with the her nine Championship rivals but no new paper has been shared around Scotland’s 42 clubs.

But the SPFL board will be hoping that Budge does finally hand over her document ahead of their next crisis talks later this week.

One Hampden source told us: “The board will be briefed about the discussions between the Championship clubs on Monday morning. But they will also want to see exactly what Hearts are proposing because, for more than a week now,the expectation was that this new reconstruction paper would be produced as a matter of urgency.”