Bryan Swanson

Now, it's being left to those competitions to decide.

So we're still waiting to find out whether there will be the short term fix of offering players extensions under existing contractual arrangements, their salary bonuses, et cetera, stay the same.

There's been no announcement on that yet, but clearly to maintain the integrity of the competition, they're going to have to come up with something that doesn't compromise that.

But a lot of players will ultimately be sitting in limbo at the moment, wondering what is going to happen.

And remember, when you look at the longer term implications and ramifications of the coronavirus, just think back to what Richard Bevan, the chief executive of the League Managers Association, told us last month.

He said more than £1 billion could be wiped off the value of player transfers after this pandemic.

You know, it's a stark warning to everyone in the game that it's not going to be the same.

It's not going to be the same as the game that we left in March.

this an international crisis you know this is affecting all of us in different ways i think the key point to remember here is that football's not in control nobody is we're all waiting for the government and the medical experts to tell us the best way out of this crisis you know it's called project restart in the premier league but this will be project reset for world football for the game to return there's got to be a joined up approach things are going to need to be done differently fifa needs to work with uefa who need to work with associations we've never had

such a financial stress like this before the strain is enormous and it's an ever-changing landscape all of this as thousands of people are dying every day across europe it's a tragic situation and we all know that things will be different in the long term you know we can't yet have certainty in such an uncertain time we are living through a pandemic huge ramifications across society across business across life this is going to take planning patience partnerships throughout football

like never before.

It's simply never happened in our lifetime.

And we know it's never going to be the same again.

It's just how we come out of this.

That's what ultimately will be dictated to by government and those medical experts.

So football is now being entirely guided by the government.

So by the end of this week, we will be a little clearer about how the UK intends to begin to exit this period of lockdown, the period of restrictions.

And what that will give is some sort of clarity for football, in particular the Premier League, in particular the EFL, about the next step.

And the next step is allowing players to return in group sessions

and allowing contact between players, and that's the thorny issue.