Sheffield United manager Chris Wilder says contact training “has to come as quickly as possible” while Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola believes his players are keen to return.
Players and managers from England’s top-flight clubs were briefed on proposals for the reintroduction of contact training on Tuesday, with club executives due to vote on them at a shareholders’ meeting on Wednesday.
Giving the green light to stage two of training will be another landmark moment in the league’s ‘Project Restart’ plans, with a return to action in mid-June the ultimate goal.
Wilder has been impressed by the success of Germany’s Bundesliga in getting competitive action up and running, and believes there is now “light at the end of the tunnel”.
“There’s an enormous amount of enthusiasm in this country to watch football and I think (the Bundesliga) is a great gauge of what the Premier League will be like when we get back,” he told the club’s official website.
“There are an awful lot of opinions flying about but thankfully there is a light at the end of the tunnel that we can all get back to normality in terms of our working.
“It’s an ongoing scenario from day to day, it has the ability to pause and change with certain situations that may happen. Step two is contact and making the groups bigger and that has to come as quickly as possible to accelerate the small sided games, 11 vs 11s and then the return to playing.”
The Premier League proposals for contact training will be based on guidance published by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on Monday.
That guidance recommends contact being gradually built up, first among clusters of two to three players, increasing to groups of four to 12 players before ultimately a return to full team training.
It also recommends meticulous record-keeping of any close contact – defined as anything which occurs within the two-metre social distancing boundary – so that in the event of a positive test, contacts can easily be traced.
Testing will continue to take place twice a week, with the next set of Premier League results due to be published on Wednesday.
If the contact training protocols are approved, a further shareholders’ meeting is scheduled for Thursday when clubs will look at wider issues. Stage one training – involving small groups observing social distancing – was introduced last Tuesday – the day after clubs voted in favour of the protocols.
These will include possibly settling on a restart date, further discussions on the use of neutral venues, considerations around the broadcast of matches and talks on what should happen if the season should have to be curtailed.
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola suggested his players were keen to resume but deferred to those who were on the frontline of the pandemic response.
“I think they are looking forward to coming back training again and doing what they like. They’ve come back perfectly,” he told City TV.
“(But) we’re not doing anything special. The special (people) are the doctors, nurses, scientists, cleaners, who put their lives at risk to save ours. Many people in the NHS put their own lives at risk to save ours. It’s incredible what they have done and we have to follow them. We cannot do anything wrong.”
In the EFL, there remains a lack of consensus around how to conclude the 2019/20 season. Tranmere chairman Mark Palios, whose club occupy one of the relegation places in League One, re-entered the debate on Tuesday evening with a new proposal for the EFL board.
It suggested any early curtailment of the campaign should see a points-per-game formula applied to the table, with “the statistical average actual margin for error over the last 3 years” then applied to the results.
Under the suggestion teams in automatic promotion places would go up regardless, while any teams in the current or projected table’s play-off places would be invited to take part in a tournament. Relegation would only befall clubs who were in the drop zone after the margin-for-error calculation.
The lengthy accompanying statement includes an explanation which appears to sum up the root of the plan. It reads: “The beauty of football is its unpredictability. Teams go on strong runs and on poor runs. Some react well to pressure and some badly.
“What is a virtual certainty is that if the season was played to a conclusion, those which PPG puts in the relegation spots would not be those who are relegated, and those which PPG puts in the promotion spots would not be those who are promoted.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here