Leeds United given promotion backing by Derby County

The Championship season remains suspended amidst the country's battle with coronavirus with Leeds top of English football's second tier and one point above West Brom.

The second-placed Baggies are then six points clear of third-placed Fulham with nine games left to play.

Derby, meanwhile, sit 12th, five points off the play-offs, and Morris believes Leeds and West Brom would merit automatic promotion if the remainder of the campaign was curtailed.

"I think firstly let's go through a list of priorities on this," said Morris, speaking to Rams TV.

"First and foremost I think is the safety of our players, our officials, our staff and of course any supporters that may or may not be included in whatever happens going forwards.

"Saving human lives is absolutely clearly the number one priority and that goes way and above anything else.

"The second priority in this one for me is the survival of the football clubs, to make sure that whatever is done is supportive of that.

"And then we come down after that to what are we then really concerned about.

"We can talk about things like the integrity of the sport and the league and those things, you can talk about promotion and relegation and all those pieces there.

"And I think that, let's face it, if we stop playing now there's no guarantee that even if we kick off let's say in June that we are going to see the season out because I guarantee if we are hit with a big plight of players being infected by this dreaded disease then it will bring things to a rapid halt.

"The intent and desire is of course that we want to play football but also the intent is that I'd sooner play football with fans in the stadium then without because I think that has a financial implication but we have seen already in Germany that it is soulless, even watching a televised game when there are no supporters in the stadium.

"We have got to think carefully about this but in terms of whether the season is played out or not, let's face it, if you stop the season now you will be hard pressed to say that the top two probably shouldn't just be promoted automatically.

"Certainly, if I was asked to vote for that, I would vote for that.

"The situation regarding the play-offs, that is probably a bit more tricky in terms of those people probably one or two points away from the play-off zone at the moment. That might be a bit unfair, but you have got to draw the line somewhere so that's got to be done.

"And then there is this talk then about whether or not we have promotion and relegation in all of the leagues.

"One of the things that I heard mooted by another club in the Premier League was that they may have to make room for 22 clubs in the Premier League so effectively they can promote but there's no relegation and that's interesting.

"Twenty two clubs in the Premier Division sounds easy but it is a ten per cent pay cut on the media income for Premier League clubs that are already in there so I don't know, it's challenging.

"The thought of there being legal battles around what might happen with that, we have to make sure that can't happen.

"It's going to be decided some way or the other, there's going to be some winners and some losers.

"It's one season and 20 years from now we will look back on this and it will be a blip in time, significant because of its impact but it's overall impact on sport won't be that huge.

"I think we have got to be responsible, save lives first, save clubs second and then let's talk about how we get proper engagement for the fans and those things within and then let's see what we do with the league.

"I'm very pragmatic about it but for me football only returns when fans can actually go into the stadium for real, that's what I feel about it."