OUR politicians are telling us we are about to enter the eye of the Covid-19 storm — the week infections will peak.
There is so much uncertainty facing the world with this dreadful pandemic, it seems rather frivolous to be worried about when football will recommence.
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But I am worried.
The re-start is delayed until the virus is at least well under control, and who knows when that will be?
Even then, matches could be behind closed doors. This would save about £760million on our TV contracts but do nothing for all the other lost income.
And, as worried as I am about the financial impact, I am more worried about the health and wellbeing of my players.
All PL football players are in lock down at home (except some of the Spurs ones!) and there is only so much you can do to keep fit on a treadmill.
Some of my players are in flats, have no access to a garden and are literally, and I mean literally… climbing the walls!
The PL have said that whatever happens there will be at least a three-week return to fitness before any game is played and the season recommences.
Each club’s medical team have a different view about if this is enough time to get properly match-fit.
And then what happens if games recommence and players get injured when playing? Are they sent to an already overburdened NHS hospital, as most private clinics are closed, and private hospitals repurposed?
How will we know if they are even fit to play and not able to spread the infection to other players?
We know some people can have the infection but remain asymptomatic. So how will testing be done, and by who?
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There is talk of an anti-gen test to see who has had the infection and is now immune, so declared fit to play.
Which is great, except such a test does not exist and the ones that do are only 68 per cent accurate.
What happens if one team has a fully-fit squad and another club doesn’t — is it hard luck?
And do we need to test every day? As one day you might not have the infection and the next you might have got it? It’s a minefield.
Do players get anti-gen tests before our besieged front-line NHS staff? I know if I was offered a test I would donate mine to a front-line NHS worker.
So you can see there is a lot to think about but I for one know our main obligation is to put the welfare of our players and staff in front of finance.
Talking of finance, we have the players’ union chief executive Gordon Taylor stubbornly resisting collective reaction to football’s Covid-19 crisis.
I wonder why? Surely it is in the interests of his members from the elite to the everyday that as many clubs as possible remain intact. Keeping players’ jobs is one of his duties.
Some have, rather nastily, suggested that it’s because his annual salary is a union world record £2.3m, which gives him earning power a 75-year-old working man can only dream of and he would face losing his ever-lasting job should he fail to replicate the contribution of his top players in his own wage packet.
I don’t think this can be right as he has already said he is stepping down and has donated £500k of his own money to the cause.
He was once an innovative union boss, winning a percentage of a TV deal that netted the union huge sums and markedly improved terms for young players.
It’s time for that Gordon to make an appearance.
Because, Taylor’s no-cuts, no-deferral decision is deeply harmful to the cause he professes to serve, and now each club is having to have their own conversations with their own players.
This will result in different outcomes for each club. Some clubs will defer/cut more than others, which seems unfair.
How will the morale of the team be affected if every club is doing something different and we still have games to play and a league to finish?
For Taylor to turn a blind eye to these problems is no use to anyone.
Seriously, I can think of no reason why there should be such a quarrel.
There wasn’t a hostile word in cricket where peace was quietly achieved for the benefit of the whole game.
And because of this delay, thoroughly decent footballers who do so much for charity directly and via their tax contributions are having their reputations muddied.
At West Ham, we continue to pay all our full and part-time staff 100 per cent of their wages.
Other clubs think differently. They wish to take advantage of furlough payments to their supplementary staff.
I’m not fooling anyone. If this suspension goes on for months eventually there will be grasping for any straws to try to prevent many more clubs from drowning.
The prospect of this possibility is the reason why I have cut my own salary by 30 per cent, just as our manager David Moyes has.
We continue to work through all the questions and queries — the ifs, the buts, the maybes.
But one thing I know is that if you try managing an apocalypse you can’t.
You must have the foresight to plan for when things will return to normal, whatever “normal” will mean in the future.
As at some point this will be over.
In the meantime our guiding principle needs to be that we will always do the right thing, at the right time and for the right reason.
It’s in the dark times that the real measure of who you are and what you stand for is exposed.
WHU stands for family, generosity, togetherness and loyalty and those will be our principles through this crisis.
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
