Wednesday and Boro tackling virus outbreaks
SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY and Middlesbrough have closed their training grounds after significant Covid- 19 outbreaks but both are anxious to play their FA Cup third- round ties tomorrow.
A mandatory round of Football League testing has highlighted the scale of infections, but the increase to twice- weekly checks which will now follow has been welcomed by Yorkshire football.
The number of positives returned by Shrewsbury Town has seen their FA Cup match against Southampton postponed, whilst the game due to kick off the latest stage of the competition, between Aston Villa and Liverpool, is under threat after the Midlands club were forced to close their facilities.
But with new rules that could see clubs thrown out of the competition if they are unable to play ties before the fourth round kicks off on January’s penultimate weekend, the Owls were quick to say they will travel to League Two Exeter City, albeit without caretaker manager Neil Thompson and temporary assistants Lee Bullen and Steven Haslam, who are isolating after positives.
Clubs can only postpone FA Cup ties if they have fewer than 14 players. Decisions on whether they will be thrown out of the competition will be made on a case- by- case basis.
Derby County will send a youth team to their game at Conference North Chorley with caretaker manager Wayne Rooney and his players in isolation. Middlesbrough manager Neil Warnock has been saying for some time he thought the FA Cup offered a good opportunity to field younger players, and his and Wednesday’s teams may be heavy with them.
League One Doncaster Rovers have this week come out of a period of isolation which had sidelined them since December 22, and manager Darren Moore does not expect to be able to name a full nine- man substitute’s bench at Championship Blackburn Rovers. Their latest test results are due today.
“Not everybody will be available,” he cautioned. “We’ve been filtering them in day by day, they’ve not returned as a group. They seem okay but we’re training and looking for any adverse reactions. You’re consistently asking if they’re okay.
“We’ve just been trying to get their sharpness back.
“The guys have been doing individual work ( whilst the training ground has been shut) so it’s just been more strength and conditioning work. In terms of the fitness side, I don’t think they’ll have lost much but their touch of the ball, the combinations and the understandings are more what we’ve been working at since they’ve come back in. On top of that we’ve worked on the tactical things this week and we’ll be working on both aspects today.”
Like many in the lower leagues, Moore welcomed the new twiceweekly testing, paid for by the Professional Footballers’ Association. The previous regime of testing was very infrequent because clubs were expected to fund it.
“Certainly at League One and Two level it’s much- needed,” he commented. “With the multitude of games and the travelling it’s important everybody’s clear.
“We’ve gone back to really making sure any meetings take a certain amount of time, players travel individually, no mass gatherings for any sustained period, all the fundamentals like keeping a close distance.
“Nothing is more important than the health and safety of everybody.”
Although Moore says the authorities are opposed to extending the season, his League One counterpart Grant McCann believes more Covid- 19 postponements are inevitable. McCann’s Hull City were due to be at Wigan Athletic for a televised game tomorrow evening, but will now play at Sunderland.
“You could be good on a Monday, for example, players could test positive on a Monday afternoon then all of a sudden your plans change,” he said. “So you’ve got to be open to the idea of changing your opponent very quickly at short notice, and I think the EFL are open to it.
“If they have to extend the season by a month, then so be it, but I think it is important that we finish the season.”
Tigers midfielder George Honeyman added: “A lot of lads live with family members and if I was in their boat I’d want to know straight away if I’d caught it because the bugbear is having it and not knowing anything about it. Hopefully things move smoother in the future with less last- minute cancelling of games.”
Bradford City defender Anthony O’Connor is the sort of player Honeyman had in mind.
“I’ve just had a baby girl so being healthy around my kids is important for me,” he said. “It is going to be important not just for our families but so we can carry on the season.”
The Bantams, who are at Scunthorpe United in League Two tomorrow, returned no positives tests this week, something joint interim manager Conor Sellars called “a big relief”.
“It gives everybody confidence,” he continued.
“We just want the games to happen but there will be hurdles and obstacles along the way.”
Harrogate Town manager Simon Weaver added: “Players do embrace when they’re celebrating goals, and the lads want to know when they’re marking a player at a corner, for example, that it’s safe to do so, because he’s been tested and wouldn’t be on the pitch if he had the virus.”
Nothing is more important than the health and safety of everybody. Doncaster Rovers manager Darren Moore on the Covid- 19 threat to footballers.
IT was an announcement to make you realise how lucky you are.
As the country goes into lockdown for the third time, elite sport will plough on. It was no great surprise, but a bit of a relief.
For some, televised football will offer a distraction from being locked in – a nice one for some, an important one for others.
For we football writers it means getting out and seeing real people, albeit from no less than two metres away, with conversation muffled by masks. Under these circumstances, you will certainly take that.
For the footballers, it is even better, they actually get to play a game most are not allowed to. With it comes responsibility. It might not always seem it when you are sat freezing your unmentionables off on a Tuesday night in some far- flung part of the country, but what we are being afforded is a great privilege so many would love at the best of times, but particularly now. The unspoken part of the deal is we must not mess it up.
Perhaps it needs to be spoken – again – more loudly to some of the more dim- witted footballers.
Just as we have to be more careful than most to justify our golden tickets, so they have to be even more vigilant. They may not all like being role models but in this instance, they have to be. Their clubs have to be, too. If football clubs want to be allowed to play and keep their revenue streams flowing – because that, certainly for the Premier League, is what it is all about – when there is a good argument to say they should not, at least not trawling up and down the country to do so, the players have to behave and their clubs must make sure they do.
There were some fine words spoken at the weekend.
“We condemn it,” said Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson after Luka Milivojevic was at a New Year’s Eve party with Fulham’s Aleksandar Mitrovic. “We certainly apologise for it.
“He should take responsibility for that.” Hear, hear.
“We are extremely disappointed and strongly condemn this image,” said Tottenham Hotspur after Giovanni Lo Celso, Erik Lamela and Sergio Reguilon were photographed ringing in the new year with Manuel Lanzini and too many others.
Good on you.
But they were just words. Hodgson picked Milivojevic to captain Crystal Palace against Sheffield United on Saturday. Lo Celso, Lamela and Reguilon were fined but the latter was on Tottenham’s bench against Leeds United, as Lanzini was against Everton, and Manchester City’s Benjamin Mendy, another rulebreaker, was against Chelsea.
Fining players but letting them play reinforces the message to these covidiots they can do what they like if they are good enough and prepared to write a cheque at the end of it. That they were stupid enough to allow themselves to be photographed showed their cavalier attitudes.
Milivojevic’s donation to the NHS, whilst welcome, reinforced the suspicion. His January 6 apology was far too late.
In a normal year they should not have been at a Thursday night party before a weekend game. In these circumstances it is a massive no- no.
Those sticking to the rules at great emotional and financial cost are deeply frustrated and for all the good work Marcus Rashford and company are doing, these players are giving them a stick to beat footballers with – quite rightly in this case.
That the authorities have apparently shied away from punishing them is bad enough but for their clubs to allow them to keep playing ( or at least in the case of Reguilon and Mendy given them a free ticket to watch from the bench) is shameful.
Those of us being treated as a special case have to earn it.