THE will is there from the Premier League’s managers.
Many of them, indeed, are getting increasingly frustrated as the weeks and months since they were properly in their natural environment have passed.
The issue now is whether they CAN do what they want to do before the clock stops ticking.
Yesterday’s video conference saw the 20 Prem bosses agreeing that, rather than the three weeks initially envisaged, they feel they need a month of training to prepare their players to perform at the highest level.
The managers want to be sure their squads are truly ready, having undergone a proper intensive build-up — including contact work — before any match action.
They will, remember, finally get back after three MONTHS of waiting and wondering if they would get the chance to lace up their boots for real this side of autumn. It is about mind AND body.
Yet with the earliest League-wide return to the very simplest of organised and individual sessions likely to be next Tuesday, four weeks would take them BEYOND the Prem restart target date of June 12.
And even that is only going to be possible if the Government gives the green light for proper contact training to begin again within a fortnight.
No wonder the bosses were left somewhat confused over whether ANY of it will actually happen, no matter how much people want it to.
The positive aspect from the meeting, which allowed the managers to listen to League chiefs and Prem medical advisor Mark Gillett, firing back their own questions, was that it was both constructive and positive.
There was, indeed, a unity of purpose and determination.
Football managers want to be football managers.
They don’t like sitting around at the best of times.
And these, as nobody needs telling, are a million miles away from the best of times.
Yet that did not prevent some of the quibbles being articulated. As well as pointing out the understandable and genuine reluctance of some players to want to get out and play in the current situation.
For some, like Jose Mourinho — who suddenly, with the returns to fitness of Harry Kane, Son Heung-min and Moussa Sissoko, believes his Spurs could still gatecrash the top four — the delays and obstructions are a source of discontent.
Mourinho, along with Jurgen Klopp — all too aware his side is just two wins away from their first title since 1990 — Ralph Hasenhuttl and Roy Hodgson, is desperate to get back on the training pitch with his players.
Any issues that extend his inability to do his job will see the Portuguese fume anew.
But even if things progress smoothly, that may take a while.
The official Government guidance, presented to the managers before being made public as it went into immediate effect yesterday afternoon, sees a “two stage” process for “elite” sportsmen.
But while the Department of Culture, Media and Sport described the document as providing “a significant step towards a safe resumption of live sport behind closed doors” it was, in truth, only a baby step.
Players are now allowed to “carry out individual performance training”, although only “under carefully controlled medical conditions, providing they keep two metres apart at all times from their teammates and other people outside their household”.
Premier League stars must also be confirmed Covid-free before being cleared to take part and then be subjected to twice-weekly further examinations.
But in the small-print were red flags that mean some Prem players may be BANNED from even the most basic of training ground drills.
The Government confirmed that players who share a household with anybody deemed “clinically extremely vulnerable” are not allowed to leave their homes for organised training.
That applies to those with family members undertaking chemotherapy for cancer, with leukaemia or bone-marrow disease, severe asthma or blood disorders including sickle cell disease.
A 2014 scientific study featured two Prem players suffering with sickle cell, which has 15,000 current sufferers in the UK and predominantly affects people from African or Caribbean backgrounds.
But the managers, to a shared sense of disappointment, were also told that there was no precise date by which they could then move to “Stage Two”, allowing contact training and intensive coaching work — the real deal for the managers.
The document confirms: “Small groups of athletes and staff will be able to interact in much closer contact, for example close quarters coaching, team sports tackling, equipment sharing.”
Watford boss Nigel Pearson, whose club have not hidden their concerns at being railroaded back into action, will have seen that as further reason for his own sense of caution.
It is still vague and woolly. Aims and ambitions, not concrete dates, which could all be overturned and sent into disarray long before that planned resumption.
No wonder some of the managers are still a little jumpy. You can’t blame them.
Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.sportingexcitement.com/football/premier-league/carlos-tevezs-agent-kia-joorabchian-hits-back-at-neville-after-man-utd-legend-claimed-former-team-mate-downed-tools
