FRANK LAMPARD says his Chelsea team will need a pre-season and a month of training to get back to full fitness for when the Premier League resumes.
Top flight chiefs will meet on Monday to deliver their verdict on plans for football coming back amid the coronavirus pandemic.
But in remains to be seen what the standard will be like given that players have been in lockdown like the rest of us since March 23.
Chelsea players such as Billy Gilmour – who revealed he is using this time out to learn sign language – have posted videos of themselves working out.
But Stamford Bridge boss Lamps – who recently explained his four major issues with Project Restart – knows they will need to ramp up the intensity to get match-fit.
He outlined his plans in a video call that Chelsea set up with key worker and lifelong Blues supporter Dr Panos Theodoropoulos.
Lampard said: “It was really important, firstly, for me and the staff, to make sure everyone was mentally alright with this sudden change which means you can’t leave the house.
“Once we got our head around that, we’d try and keep in contact with the players all the time but we’ve given them daily plans.
“They train in the hour we were given in lockdown and you can be outside, we gave them running plans.
“They run and then we change the plans every week. We don’t make them run everyday, sometimes we make them come off it slightly where they can then do some strength work at home.
“The hardest thing for us is when you don’t know the return – were so used to building up for a game next week so its hard. How many runs can you give them? So we change it up.
“There’s some weeks where we’ve rested them a bit and then we keep working and staying in contact.
“Not only is it a long break but for big parts of that break they’ve been sitting down on the sofa. They haven’t been getting as active as they normally would be.
“We will need to play that one by ear and see what period of time we get, whenever we do go back.
“They’re talking about going back in smaller groups, which is how we’ll probably start and that will be more about maintaining fitness and then stepping it up.
“We need some form of a pre-season and proper training for three or four weeks.”
