Stars catching virus will test credibility of Prem.. and integrity of clubs

FUNDAMENTALLY, I’m not against us making the leap to try to get football matches back on.

I’ve made it clear over the past few weeks that the game shouldn’t restart until it is absolutely safe to do so.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see it back as soon as possible and, if we’re now trying to get people back to work, then of course football should be no different to other jobs.

The one thing I am struggling to get my head round, though, is what happens if players start contracting coronavirus once the season has resumed?

What happens if, say, Arsenal tell us on a Thursday that Pierre-emerick Aubameyang, Alex Lacazette, Bernd Leno and David Luiz have all fallen ill and won’t therefore be available for the following two weeks?

The Gunners, like any club, could have up to four games in any 14-day period and I just can’t see how that doesn’t hit the credibility of the season if some teams are being deprived of half of their best starting line-up in any given game.

Perhaps an even bigger red flag has unfurled before our eyes over the weekend as well with more cases coming to light of footballers catching the virus.

We have seen Dynamo Dresden’s entire squad quarantined for 14 days just a week before the Bundesliga resumes, and Brighton have confirmed a third player has tested positive for Covid-19 this week.

I’m not questioning either club in the slightest here, but what happens if a similar situation arises involving a relegation-threatened club with two or three games to go.

You only have to look at the Twitter responses to Brighton’s post confirming their latest case to know plenty of people will question the veracity of such a claim.

I certainly don’t trust football clubs to front up all the facts because I know how the football industry works. I have been in it and seen most, if not all, of the ruses.

You don’t have to have been a player to know the classic example of clubs pulling players out of international duty because of hamstring problems, only for them to be fit as a fiddle when the league resumes a fortnight later.

This is an extension of that and what’s to say we won’t have clubs looking at a potential £100million or £200m blackhole that comes with relegation and saying, ‘Right, we have seven or eight players who have tested positive, we can’t play tomorrow’? If that does prove to be the case, what happens then?

That’s why with all these meetings scheduled in the coming days, this is a pivotal week for the Premier League. And as things unfold, we need concrete answers from them about how they plan to deal with all of the potential flashpoints that could arise between now and the season ending, whenever that is.

The caveat, of course, is that neither Boris Johnson nor the DCMS have mentioned football in any great detail in the past couple of days, and that doesn’t bode particularly well.

Maybe that shows football’s over-inflated sense of importance perhaps isn’t matched in the hallowed corridors of Whitehall.

I just can’t see how that doesn’t hit the credibility of the season if teams are deprived of half of their best line-up