Former England international and fitness expert fears for health of Championship players due to short-notice return

English Football League announced on Sunday that the league is due to resume on 20 June after it was halted in March by the coronavirus pandemic

Former Wolves fitness guru Tony Daley believes Championship players are being rushed back to action too quickly.

The ex-England international, who spent a decade at Molineux as the club’s head of sports science and conditioning, is wary of the timeframe to restart the competition.

The English Football League announced on Sunday that the league is due to resume on 20 June after it was halted in March by the coronavirus pandemic.

Clubs were angry after not all were consulted, with QPR boss Mark Warburton insisting the plan puts players’ safety at risk.

Out-of-contract Charlton stars Lyle Taylor and Chris Solly, along with Birmingham loanee David Davis, will not play for the Addicks due to fears they will get injured and ruin summer moves, and Daley feels returning so quickly is a gamble.

“It’s definitely a week, minimum, too early to come back,” he told the PA news agency

“Players will have been doing something to tick over, but you can’t substitute football fitness, contact, accelerating, decelerating – [not] in two-and-a-half weeks.

“They will have been mentally switched off and to come back in two-and-a-half weeks, it’s a big ask. It can be done, but I won’t be surprised if there’s a large increase in soft muscle injuries.

“In any other circumstances, if they have been off for this length of time – if they’ve been injured – it would take four to six weeks to get back to match fitness. And that’s including practice games. There will be an issue with injuries.”

In the build-up to the Bundesliga resuming last month, Borussia Dortmund lost five players to muscle strains in 17 days, the amount of time before the Championship starts again. Many teams having only just returned to contact training.

“Look at Germany now, there’s a three to four-fold injury increase because of the way they returned,” said Daley, a former winger who spent nine years at Aston Villa and earned seven England caps.

“In any pre-season you have a build-up for four to six games before you start playing that includes at least playing two 90-minute games.

“The players aren’t coming back from scratch and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve had a two-week programme and it’s changed accordingly to when they were going to come back – they will be at a decent level, but it’s cramming that into a two-and-a-half week period.”

PA