The Premier League’s plans of restarting the football season suffered a big blow as a third Brighton player has tested positive for coronavirus, according to media reports in England.
Individual training has been in place for Brighton players at their training ground and the club say it will be allowed to continue despite the latest setback.
Club chief executive Paul Barber, while speaking to Sky Sports News, said a third member of the first-team group has tested positive despite the safety guidelines being in place.
“It is a concern,” he said. “Unfortunately we’ve had a third player test positive yesterday (Saturday, May 9), so despite all of the measures that we’ve been taking over the past few weeks, where the players haven’t been involved in any significant training at all, we’ve still suffered another player testing positive for the virus.
“So there are concerns and I think it’s normal for all clubs to have those concerns. We want to make sure we do everything that we can to ensure those protocols are in place and are safe and secure and mitigate the risk as far as we can.”
On the season restarting, Barber said there needs to be a framework as to how clubs should structure their training routines amid the ongoing pandemic.
“One of the things we’ve asked the Premier League for is a complete plan of all of the stages of returning to play,” Barber said.
“First we need to get players back training in small groups, then they need to get involved in some contact training and then training for a match before the match itself.
“So there are lots of stages, it’s very complex and there are people at the Premier League working very hard to produce detailed paperwork to move through those stages as safely as possible.”