Tranmere Rovers Football Club can confirm this weekend’s game against Cheltenham Town will be played behind closed doors with no supporters in attendance.
This follows the news that was released earlier today that the Government had given permission for English Football League clubs to stage pilots with up to 1,000 fans at league matches this weekend.
The Club received an email at 11.22am this morning from the EFL inviting clubs to put themselves forward for a pilot match this weekend with a 2pm deadline set for an answer. This was the first notification we received that piloting was a possibility for this weekend.
Clubs were only allowed to apply to pilot if their plans for staging matches with supporters had been signed off by their local safety advisory group.
The football club has been working with our safety advisory group on our plans for fans to return to Prenton Park, but they have not yet been formally submitted to be signed off, so we were unable to apply to host fans this weekend.
The Club has already put in a considerable amount of work into the plans for fans to safety return to Prenton Park, just as we did for our players returning to training and hosting behind closed doors matches at the stadium.
We hope to be in a position to submit our full plans by the beginning of next week.
The Club would like to stress that the health of spectators when attending football matches is the priority and we will continue to follow guidance provided by the Government.
We appreciate your continued support and patience and we can’t wait to see the SWA back in Prenton Park as soon as it is safe to do so.