As mentioned by Willian in his video chat yesterday, Chelsea are putting plans in place for a potential return to work (i.e. training) next week. And while that seems incongruous with what’s happening in the wider world, those intentions have been corroborated by a report from the Mirror, who claim that at least half the teams are planning to return to training in the next 7 days.
Of course, those plans may have been put in place when the stoppage was first announced and the hope was that we would be able to resume playing on April 4. While no official guidance has been issues by either the league or the government, that date now seems rather hopeful, especially with a London lockdown looming.
The Premier League are set for another meeting today to draw up further contingency plans. With UEFA shifting things, if we could resume playing by early May, we could yet finish out the season before June 30 — possibly behind closed doors, but still complete!
Either way, teams will need some time to return to match fitness, so they would need to get back to training at least a couple weeks in advance of any restart.
Here is the Mirror’s list of current plans for the 20 Premier League teams:
Arsenal – Back Tuesday (March 24)
Aston Villa – Unknown
Bournemouth – Back Monday (March 23)
Brighton – Back Friday (March 19)
Burnley – Training ongoing as usual
Chelsea – Back Monday (March 23)
Crystal Palace – Training Ground closed until Wednesday (March 25)
Everton – Unknown
Liverpool – Unknown
Leicester – Training ground closed for the foreseeable future
Manchester City – Unknown
Manchester United – Players told to train alone for the foreseeable future
Newcastle – Back Thursday (March 26)
Norwich – Back Wednesday (March 25)
Sheffield United – Unknown
Southampton – Ordered to train at home
Tottenham – Training ongoing as usual
Watford - Back Friday (March 19)
West Ham – Training ground closed for the foreseeable future
Wolves – Back Thursday (March 18)