JAMES MORGAN

Hazard, his goalscoring replacement, limped off with cramp in the 79th minute.

The study suggested that this might indicate a degree of overloading as Dortmund attempt to chase down Bayern Munich in the title race. So why not the same when it comes to relegation from the richest league in the world?

It is not the only race against time. Across Europe, with clubs facing extinction, the rush to return to action might seriously endanger player safety in another manner. Gary Lewin, the former Arsenal and England physiotherapist, said yesterday on Sky Sports News that without a properly structured pre-season programme – allowing for light training, contact sessions, strength and power conditioning and work on reaction times – that factors in friendlies, then clubs might be asking for trouble.

The collateral damage here might just be the players who are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Already vulnerable to job losses as a

ROY MacGREGOR is one of Scotland’s richest and most successful businessmen so when he predicts a period of chronic uncertainty and gloom for football in this country, it is probably worth listening to him.

“I think we’re going to have a tsunami of unemployment and mental issues and big things to deal with, and lack of disposable income,” the Ross County chairman said in an interview on BBC Sportsound. “I think the challenges ahead are more than the challenges we’ve had up to now.”

MacGregor’s solution? He says it’s time for clubs across Scottish football to unite, work together and forget their differences. Wonderfully utopian but, actually, he’s right. It won’t happen, though.

These are unprecedented times but for the most part Scottish football has carried on in a vacuum, one in which they recognise the peril at their doors but rather than opening them up to invite in neighbours offering co-operation and communitarian spirit they have battened down the hatches and protected the status quo.