Fleetwood boss Joey Barton on why it'd be 'out of order' if Portsmouth, Sunderland and Coventry don't complete League One season

The Fleetwood boss reckons it is ‘out of order’ the campaign could be decided on an unweighted points-per-game system given how close the promotion race is.

Barton's Cod Army would qualify for the play-offs – along with Pompey, Wycombe and Oxford – if the third tier follows in League Two’s footsteps and curtails the 2019-20 campaign.

However, it would see Peterborough, Ipswich and Sunderland – who're part of a six-strong group including the Blues that want to finish remaining fixtures – confined to another year in League One.

And Barton reckons that would be unfair.

‘We've got Sunderland, Peterborough and Wycombe all scrapping for one play-off place,’ Barton told Talk the Talk YouTube show.

‘It looks like Wycombe are going to get it if they go points-per-game.

‘(Peterborough chairman) Darragh MacAnthony is alluding he's going to go bizarre.

‘I'd go nuts as well. It's out of order. We've got to finish the league.’

Premier League players such as Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero and Watford’s Troy Deeney have expressed safety concerns if they return to training amid the coronavirus crisis.

But Barton insisted players in the lower leagues can’t financially afford to take that stance.

He added: ‘I've got a lot of lads in our care who want to play. They don’t have a surplus amount of cash in the bank.

‘A lot of them live week-to-week, month-to-month because we don't earn that kind of money at this level.

‘You've got 1400 players in the lower leagues out of contract in a month's time. They're not going to be paid, have got kids to put in school, mortgages to pay for and cars to pay for.

‘We’ve seen Germany go back, we’ll probably see Italy go back in a few weeks.

‘If the Premier League boys don’t want to go back because they don't feel it’s safe and have got the money to do that then, no problem, go and do that.

‘I'm not forcing anyone to go back and do something they don't want to do.

‘But a lot of clubs need to get on with it. If we don't there won’t be any clubs in a few months’ time.

‘We need to think about the whole eco-system and not the multi-millionaires at the top.’