Is the season going to finish? (ed. Pg.53 - 3 players not returned to training)

Charlton Athletic are working towards a Championship restart date of 20 June, director of football Steve Gallen has told The Athletic, and Lee Bowyer’s team have already lined up two “pre-season” friendlies to play early next month, including one against a Premier League team.

Charlton have been especially supportive of plans to resume the Championship season, with the team currently in the relegation zone, just two points behind Hull City, Wigan Athletic and Middlesbrough. Next month, they have the opportunity to climb up the table, with players back in training and a rigorous coronavirus testing regime to keep them safe.

The Charlton squad returned for their first round of testing on Saturday May 23, to establish whether the players were safe to resume training. They did that on Monday of this week, when they had a second round of testing, the results of which came back entirely negative on Tuesday afternoon. A third round of tests is due for this Thursday.

The EFL said today that 1,030 players and staff were tested between Monday and Wednesday, with three people testing positive. Blackburn said one was their captain Elliott Bennett, while the other two came from unnamed players at Fulham.

While training this week has been limited, with no contact allowed yet, Charlton are working towards a resumption date of Saturday, June 20.

“Originally, when we spoke to the EFL last week and they gave us directions, they pretty much said, ‘You’ve got three weeks from Monday (May 25) until you play games’,” Gallen said, indicating the initial plan of a June 13 or June 16 restart. “Now that looks like it’s been pushed back another week. It looks like it’s going to be four weeks of training. You would normally do five or six weeks in pre-season. Three weeks did seem a little bit too tight, especially with the first week being non-contact.”

“But it looks like it’s going to be four weeks now and I think everyone agrees we can manage alright on four weeks. First week: non-contact. Second week: we’ll go back to contact. Third week: you’ll do more tactical stuff. And the fourth week: preparing for matches as well as physical training, like you’d normally do during the season.”

No formal date has been given by the EFL to the Championship clubs yet but they are working towards June 20 as the target. “That’s what people are talking about,” Gallen said. “No date has been given to us yet but I believe the Premier League are discussing that (June 20) this week and having a vote on that. We’re planning for June 20.”

So far this week, Championship clubs have been limited in what they can do in training. Contact training has not yet been approved by the EFL, meaning that players still have to keep their distance from one another when they are out on the training pitches. For now, the Charlton first-team outfield players are training in three groups of five.

“There’s been no contact training yet,” Gallen said. “We’re hoping that that is going to start next Monday but that still has to be ratified as well. We will always take guidance from the EFL. I go on these meetings with our club secretary Chris Parkes to get all the guidance, then I speak to the manager and all the staff about how we’re going to implement all the protocols. There was a big operation behind the scenes to get us back in on Monday but it was almost like a relief. Once everyone got back in, it seemed to fall back into place.

“But it is small group training at the moment: five players per pitch; three different coaches on three different pitches so we can work with 15 lads at one go. And the goalkeepers are training — two or three goalkeepers with a goalkeeping coach — so that’s 18. That’s the first round of things in the morning. And then we have a second group come in the afternoon, seven or eight lads, so we’ve got 25, 26 players training at the moment. It’s well organised. It’s a start. It felt like the first day of pre-season on Monday. It’s a bit new to us but everyone’s enjoying finally getting back into it.”

With contact training planned for next week and then tactical training the following week, the final challenge before the resumption will be match practice. Charlton, like all Championship teams, have not played since March 7, almost 12 weeks ago. The normal break between the end of one Championship and the start of the next one is 13 weeks.

By the time football is resumed, there will have been a 15-week gap since the last game. Even though the players have been training at home in the interim, they will need to play some real football before the resumption.

“You will only really know when we actually go back into a game,” Gallen said, when asked how fit the players were. “So we will have a couple of friendlies before we actually play matches; similar to what we’d do in pre-season. So we have already approached clubs and clubs have approached us. We will hopefully do a game in someone’s stadium, an away match, and a game at our stadium.”

While Charlton will not play any other Championship teams, they have pencilled in an away friendly against a Premier League side, as well as a home friendly against a lower-league team. The identity of the Premier League side has not been disclosed but The Athletic understands other Championships sides are also exploring warm-up matches and reported this morning that Premier League sides are considering friendly games against each other.

“It’s the same as we would do in pre-season,” Gallen said. “I think we will look upwards to play a team above us. A team has asked us. If all goes well, we will go to their stadium and play them. And then maybe we will look for a team maybe below us as well, so you get a little bit of balance. You don’t want to play someone too good and get walloped, and you don’t want want to play someone too weak, smash them, think you’ve cracked it when you haven’t. We will look up and down, so to speak. We won’t play anyone in our division.”

Charlton will also play “a couple of 11-v-11 games” at The Valley as training sessions to prepare the players for playing at home in an empty stadium.

Through this all, Charlton, like all Championship clubs, will have to continue their rigorous testing programme. Although they will have had three tests this week (last Saturday, Monday and Thursday), they will move to a programme of testing twice a week. So far, all of Charlton’s tests have been negative.

“It is going to be twice a week,” Gallen said. “But because we were testing on Saturday, the first week will be three times. Saturday was to see if everyone could come back in and everybody got through that. So then Monday was the start of a testing regime and it will be Monday, Thursday, Monday, Thursday.”

For now, the EFL is paying for the tests.

“At the moment, it is not costing us,” Gallen said. “There is no up-front cost to the club. What the EFL have said is that eventually, that will have to come out their payments to us. They give us solidarity payments at the start and end of every season, whatever division you’re in. So that will eventually come out of what is owed to us. But we all want to play football. If it’s going to cost a bit, it’s going to cost a bit. That’s our job. Not me as a player any more but the players and the coaching staff. Get back on the pitch. Work for Charlton Athletic. Try and entertain the fans. Try and win games.”

With Charlton currently in the relegation zone, they know that a resumption gives them a chance to secure their position in the Championship for next season. For Gallen, relegation with some of the season left unplayed would be unfair — but they would have no complaints if they were relegated after 46 games.

“If the current standings stood, that we are third from bottom and we get relegated, of course we would feel that is very, very unjust on our football club,” Gallen said. “We want to play the games. Our manager (Bowyer) didn’t think months ago that we would actually get back to playing. I agreed with that. I didn’t think this was going to happen. But now it looks like there is a pathway and there’s momentum for that happening. And we want to play the games. I think even if we were fourth, fifth or sixth from bottom, we’d want to play the games if we can. So we’ve got nine games to play. We will be doing our utmost to stay up. If we’re not good enough, then we’re not good enough and we go down. We know the rules. What we would find hard to fathom is if they just put us down without playing the nine games. That would be tough on us.”

And with Charlton currently in another mess off the pitch, Gallen and Bowyer are desperate to give their fans something to cheer about. Even if they won’t be there to see it.

“The fans are really, really good at Charlton,” he said. “Because they helped to get the club back to the Valley 27 years ago, they really feel part owners of the club. Our fans have been superb. They’re not very negative, although there’s been a lot of things out there that they could have been negative about. They recognise the manager has had a hard job behind the scenes, with different things going on through his tenure. Of course, the fans won’t be allowed into the stadium when we go back but we’re sure they’ll be watching online when we get back to playing. We see their support on social media. Fingers crossed, when we do go back to playing, we give them something to be happy about.”

(Photo: Charlton play Aston Villa in a pre-season friendly in Julu 2019; Naomi Baker/Getty Images)