‘EXPECT AN INJURY MELTDOWN’
Mario’s on scrapheap
MARIO BALOTELLI is heading for the scrapheap with Italian club Brescia ready to boot out the bad-boy striker.
The Italian still has two years on his contract – but it is expected to be ripped up amid reports of a fresh bust-up with Brescia president Massimo Cellino.
Former Leeds owner Cellino is ready to dump the ex-manchester City and Liverpool frontman after he went AWOL and failed to return to training when Covid-19 restrictions were eased in the country.
Despite his latest fallout, Turkey’s Galatasaray and Brazilian outfit Vasco da Gama are believed to be eyeing up an end-of-season move for Balotelli, 29.
GARRY MONK believes Championship clubs are being used as puppets by the Premier League.
Sheffield Wednesday boss Monk was left shell-shocked when the English Football League dropped a Championship return date of June 20.
That came after no consultation on the restart with the Owls and the rest of the division.
There are 108 matches remaining in the second tier’s regular season to be played behind closed doors, plus the play-off semi-finals and final, provisionally scheduled for the end of July.
And Monk admitted: “The Premier League does dictate.
“But we didn’t have any communication prior to the announcement and that took
PREMIER LEAGUE clubs have been warned they will be playing Russian Roulette with injury to their stars when Project Restart kicks off on June 17.
The warning comes from Dutch coach and conditioning expert Raymond Verheijen, who claims football’s rulers have not given clubs enough time to get their players in proper physical shape to finish the season.
Verheijen, who has worked with everyone by surprise. To come out and announce the restart, when we’d not even had prior conversations about that, was really strange. Everyone was really surprised with the announcement.
“There’s no manager in the world who can say we’ve had adequate time to prepare for the restart.
Truth
“Anyone who comes out and says that is adequate, for me, is not telling the truth.”
QPR chief executive Lee Hoos
(right) has slammed the
EFL for their provisional plans and said he was “appalled” by and “vehemently opposed” to the proposed return later this month.
And experienced boss Monk shares Hoos’ concerns and those of many other clubs – who have
Barcelona, Chelsea and Manchester City, raised similar fears before the Bundesliga restarted – and he’s been proved right. Injuries in Germany are up a massive 225 per cent on normal expectancy after their first four match days.
And Verheijen says Premier League and Championship clubs are heading for the same injury only just started contact training again since returning on May 25.
No Championship fixtures have been played since March 8 and Monk is understandably worried about the fitness of his players and the increased chance of injury after such a lengthy lay-off.
“I can understand those feelings that QPR have been talking about, but all we can do is deal with the situation and look after ourselves,” admitted Monk.
“If you’d have followed the guidelines like we have, and we started training again on the May 25 as instructed, we can’t honestly sit here today and say that is adequate preparation time for players.
“We have followed the guidelines and it’s inadequate, it definitely is.
“But we have to deal with it. meltdown when games kick-off again in England. “All the players in England are at risk for three major reasons,” he said
Fitness
“Physically and anatomically they are well below par when it comes to fitness.
“Nobody has been trained up in the normal way. The same counts
I hope common sense will prevail though and we’ll start a week behind the Premier League.
“For the players more than anything else. But if it’s not then we’ve still got to be ready, my job is to get these players ready.
“I don’t want to put my players under any unnecessary risks playing friendlies, we want to control our own environment.
Difficult
“And I appreciate for the EFL it’s an extremely difficult situation because no one has ever experienced anything like this before.
“But we’re just trying to deal with our own situation and hopefully what we can do in the time will be enough.”
Football’s financial future is unknown with revenue streams having been severely hit because of no gate receipts and hospitality income.
And Monk has warned some for the brain. A top player will push himself to the limit in matches.
“What that means is that players who are in a flow of matches can handle more knocks and physical strain.
“Not only their body, also their mind gets hardened in such a period. The brain and the body are now coming out of a totally different period. They can’t handle clubs could unfortunately go bust as a result of the problems facing the football pyramid.
“There are massive concerns,” said Monk. “Nobody knows the future of when fans will be back into stadiums, so clubs are missing huge revenue streams.
“I probably don’t believe that everyone can be saved, like all things in life not everyone comes out of it and gets through it.
“Somebody needs to act sooner rather than later to make sure clubs lower down the pyramid, and not just clubs, are helped, but for players and their families, because it’s their livelihoods at the end of the day.
“There’s a lot of people connected to football clubs that need to be helped.
“Hopefully there can be something done with that, but it doesn’t look very positive right now because we’re going into games with no crowds for the foreseeable future.”
There is no manager in the world who can say we’ve had adequate time to prepare
discomfort as easy. This increases the risk of injuries dramatically.
“Players have had a resting period of four weeks at least where they could not train as a group.
“The maths in that is always three weeks off making six weeks pre-season training. We are now going back to a full league program with just two weeks of group training maximum and zero friendly games as preparation.
“It is not difficult to work out that this is insufficient.”