Peterborough owner Darragh MacAnthony responds to criticism from Coventry and Rotherham fans and reveals why likes of Portsmouth, Sunderland and Ipswich formed heavy-hitting group

And the Peterborough owner responded to criticism of the move by Pompey and other big-hitting third-tier clubs by insisting it was an open invitation for others to join.

The likes of Accrington owner Andy Holt publicly slated the decision taken by the Blues along with Sunderland, Fleetwood, Oxford United, Ipswich Town and the Posh.

But MacAnthony was typically forthright in his reasoning for doing so on the latest episode of his Football Club Chairman - Hard Truth podcast.

He said: ‘Maybe people took it the wrong way. There were other club’s fans who got salty about the fact we wanted to play and I know another owner on Twitter was getting on his soapbox and getting upset about it.

‘But here’s the reality: we rang around lots of clubs and we wanted to have conversations with a lot of other clubs. It was an open invitation.

‘Those who chose to tune it, tuned it. Those who didn’t, didn’t

‘What we wanted to talk as football clubs. It’s great when we have EFL updates and PDFs, but you don’t know what other clubs are thinking so it’s for all the owners to get together, hammer it out and talk about it.

‘After all this is our product: football.

‘We’re now being told to get back training so the idea was to open up the conversation, have a like-minded conversation and hear the reasons people did and didn’t want to continue

‘We didn’t want to just talk about these nine games, but also next season.

‘That was the idea and spirit of the chat.’

MacAnthony added there were pro-active moves to get the likes of Coventry, Rotherham and Wycombe involved in the talks which took place.

He made it clear there was no intention to cause a rift between League One clubs.

MacAnthony added: ‘It was really good chat and it was interesting getting to know the MD at Portsmouth, directors at Oxford, Fleetwood, of course, Ipswich and Sunderland.

‘It was a general conversion saying “look guys, this is our product and it’s so important for our future we get out there and play”.

‘We spoke to a lot of other clubs and to those Coventry and Rotherham fans who are upset about it, at the time, we reached out to them and tried with Wycombe.

‘The Wycombe owner emailed me a few weeks ago, so we tried to get him on.

‘The bottom line was we wanted to make it very transparent we wanted football back on, it wasn’t us versus them as some people took it. For that, I can apologise.

‘That wasn’t the intention. The overall message was we wanted football back on.’