Players divided on Premier’s return

FOOTBALL: As they work through the logistics of “project restart”, winning over its players would seem to be one of the big barriers to resuming the 201920 Premier League season.

While Sheffield United’s players have consistently come across as keen to get back onto the pitch, with Enda Stevens and John Egan both voicing their support for a restart in Thursday’s The Yorkshire Post, others have been less enthusiastic.

Club captains and coaches were involved in Wednesday’s Premier League meeting and while the coaches are thought to have insisted on four weeks’ preparation, effectively putting back the league’s intended June 12 restart date, the players are said to have expressed more fundamental concerns, about training and those with underlying conditions, such as asthma.

Brighton and Hove Albion striker Glenn Murray has called on the game to take its time, insisting: “Football isn’t necessarily a necessity – it’s a game, it’s a sport.”

He also cautioned against blindly following Germany’s Bundesliga, which resumes at the weekend. As Huddersfield Town’s German captain Christopher Schindler pointed out to The Yorkshire Post this week, conditions in the two countries are not comparable.

“What if we go through all this rigmarole of trying to get back started, and we have a second peak and we’re stopped anyways?” cautioned Murray.

“I just can’t understand after just sort of loosening the lockdown why we’re in such a rush to get it back. Why can’t we just wait sort of a month or so to see if things go to plan?

“Why not see how the country deal with softening the lockdown first before we even think about starting unnecessary sport when people are dying all around us and the death rates are still high?”