Bruce: Push restart back three weeks
Opposition to June 12 plan raised by ‘most managers’ Injury fears for players not given time to regain fitness
Steve Bruce, the Newcastle United manager, has revealed there is widespread opposition to the Premier League’s plans to restart on June 12 as he warned that players would not be fit enough to play until the end of the month.
Bruce is the first manager to reveal clear details of what was discussed at the Project Restart meeting on Wednesday and, although there is a strong desire to resume the season as soon as possible, tension remains, with the return to training – which will be voted on by Premier League clubs tomorrow – only the first of three phases.
A number of players, including Newcastle’s Danny Rose, have detailed their concerns over returning to action, but Bruce insists he would have no issue if any of his squad refused to train and has called for more respect to be shown to those who are reluctant to put their families at risk.
He has also claimed players will not be match-fit by June 12 after eight weeks of inactivity during lockdown, saying Project Restart should be postponed until June 30. Such a move would cause knock-on effects for finishing the season and ensuring the 2020-21 campaign can start on time, but he is adamant players run the risk of serious injury if games start on the current scheduled date.
“We’ve listened to what has been said and, with the precautions taken, we will get back to work and start phase one,” Bruce told The Sunday
Telegraph. “Can we get to that stage where we can have all the players on the pitch together? We don’t know yet.
“Phase one will be mainly fitness work, four or five players on a pitch. Let’s see how we get on [and hope there are no infections].
“They have had eight weeks off and that is probably the longest break some of these players have had in their careers. If we were doing pre-season, we would have six weeks and probably have six friendly games to get them ready for the first league match.
“So, we need a good stretch of time here to get them ready. Certainly once we get into stage two, that is vitally important. We need enough preparation to get these players into shape or they are just going to fall down like a pack of cards. Most of the managers have the same concerns. We would need at least six weeks. I don’t see how we can play games until the back end of June.”
Bruce also took aim at those who have attacked players for expressing reservations about football returning. Joey Barton, the Fleetwood Town manager, has publicly accused Watford’s Troy Deeney and Brighton’s Glenn Murray of trying to avoid a relegation battle by airing their fears publicly.
“Everybody has their own set of circumstances and you have to take that into account,” Bruce said. “But, certainly, the measures being put in place, you’re probably more at risk going to the supermarket or putting petrol in your car. We are in a fortunate position, we can get tested every three days.
“We will be tested on Sunday, every player and every member of staff. Once we get the results back, if everybody is OK, we are pencilled to start training again at 2pm on Tuesday afternoon.
“If a player becomes infected, he will be quarantined and will need to have two clear tests before he can come back to train. Danny Rose expressed his concerns, but I’ve spoken to him and he is coming back as well. I don’t think there is a footballer out there who has done more for the NHS throughout this than Danny.
“If a player refuses to come in or play, I have sympathy for that. Most of my players are happy with it. There was a captain’s meeting as well and, as a squad, they are happy with the measures being put in place. You have to respect everybody’s personal views.”
Amoment of quiet contemplation on Monday’s Premier League shareholders call when it was explained to the 20 clubs that a rebate of £350million is the estimated total to be demanded by the broadcasters, even if the season is to be completed.
Later in the week, the 24 clubs of League Two decided overwhelmingly in favour of abandoning their season when told of the crippling expense each would incur – £400,000 – in paying for the testing, wages and cleaning to complete the season. In League One, the view would have been the same were it not for the fact that, unlike the division below, there is no way of resolving promotion and relegation to the satisfaction of all clubs.
On Friday, the Football League told a Zoom call of Championship managers that their clubs would have to vote on a rule change if they were to resolve the issues of promotion, play-offs and relegation in the event of a curtailment. Already there are problems. Lee Bowyer, the Charlton manager, pointed out to his old Leeds manager Howard Wilkinson that a points-per-game solution would relegate his club despite the fact they only dropped into the bottom three for the first time this season in their last game before lockdown.
The daily life of the game, with its feuds, inequalities, Var rows and monstrous egos is problematic, but nothing like as problematic, it turns out, as trying to decide a football competition without any football.
English football’s biggest clubs, and some of its smaller ones too, will have watched the opening day of the Bundesliga resumption with a little prayer for some signs of hope. There was not much to love about the echoing shouts of the players around the Signal Iduna Park during the Ruhr derby, the socially-distanced substitutes or the tens of thousands of empty yellow seats, but at least it was live football and it will be live football that saves clubs.
Outside the grounds there was no evidence of supporters breaking social-distancing provisos to try to get to the stadium, in spite of Borussia Dortmund against Schalke typically being a fiercely-contested local derby. That may reflect a profile of the German football supporter more readily accepting of necessary public health measures, but as a test for what English fans might do it was encouraging.
“God forbid we have a fatality,” Watford manager Nigel Pearson says. “People are closing their eyes to the threat.” God forbid indeed, but are English football’s eyes really shut to the threat?
Premier League players will arrive for the first phase of training this week at training grounds very different from those they know. There will be tent stations set up for testing and the buildings will be out of limits for all. In the Championship, clubs are facing the same, £200,000 bills each for a Covid-19 testing programme. Eyes could hardly be said to be closed – but what of the risk?
The Office for National Statistics data on Covid-19 fatalities for five weeks in England and Wales up to May 1 for men aged between 20 and 34 stood at 62 deaths out of a population sector size of 5,938,419. There is no indication how many of those 62 had underlying conditions. A one in 95,781 chance of dying is not without risk, but it is one upon which some will take an optimistic view. As for the reported danger to the black, Asian and ethnic minority group, the ONS statistics show that BAME groups are twice as likely to contract the disease as part of unspecified external factors. There was no evidence to say they were at greater risk of dying having contracted it.
Can the Premier League make these arguments over the coming weeks in a way that will reassure players, managers and supporters? In The
Sunday Telegraph today Steve Bruce, the Newcastle manager, raises doubts over the time frame that the league has laid out for a return to action on June 12. Indeed, the conference call for managers on Wednesday was generally so poorly received that one manager told the Premier League that if it presented the same way for the players it had no hope of success.
As for the players themselves, it was no surprise that of those speaking on the call Troy Deeney, the Watford captain, was the most sceptical about
Some players may wish to isolate themselves away in hotels if and when the league starts
the Premier League’s plan. It is a position his club have adopted from ownership to chief executive. Watford, for their part, say that Deeney saw no point in participating if he was not to have his voice heard and he certainly achieved that. What Jonathan VanTam, a professor of health protection who agreed to speak on the call made of it, we can only wonder.
Some players may wish to isolate if and when the league starts, sequestering themselves in hotels, as some NHS workers have had to do. Others may decide that the risk to them and those around them is simply too great to countenance playing. But there are others who have assessed the risk sensibly and decided that it is one they can live with when it comes to playing football again and trying to save their livelihoods, their clubs and their profession.
Danny Ings told The Daily Telegraph yesterday that he was ready to play. “For me it’s absolutely vital to try to save the organisation of football,” he said. “Not just the Premier League but football at all levels.”
There are doubtless many like him who will have watched the Bundesliga’s return this weekend and studied the risks. Some may add their voices to Ings’s, although that can be hard in a country gripped by a panic when perspective can so often be lost. But football needs to try to adapt to this new reality if it is to save itself, which it will have to do sooner rather than later.