EFL announcement confirms key summer date that Boro will hope to avoid

Boro remain in the hunt for promotion to the Premier League with five games remaining. It would make Championship fixture release day irrelevant to Kim Hellberg’s side.

But with Boro currently on a five-game winless run, Hellberg has admitted that Ipswich Town are now in pole position for automatic promotion, meaning Boro might need to use the play-offs to seal their promotion.

Failing that, Boro will unfortunately spend a record tenth consecutive season in England’s second tier, in which case, the new key dates announced by the EFL will become relevant.

The EFL had previously announced that the new season would kick-off with the first round of the Carabao Cup on the weekend of Saturday, August 8, with the Championship campaign starting a week later.

The Premier League campaign then starts a week after that, with top flight sides not entering the cup until the second round either.

On top of confirming that EFL league fixtures will be released on Thursday, June 25, the EFL have also confirmed that the first-round draw for the Carabao Cup will take place on Fixture Release Day too.

As for broadcast selections, times for the opening weekend games will be confirmed on Fixture Release Day, with every game being broadcast live. Selections up to the end of September will be announced by July 2.

In a slight change, TV picks up until January 8 will then be confirmed by July 31, before games up to the start of March are confirmed by November. Thereafter, TV picks become a rolling four-week-notice weekly announcement.

While Boro will hope that all of the above is ultimately irrelevant to their season next year, as they go on and win promotion back to the Premier League, it could be that the above dates are all important by the end of May.

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