Manchester United have told overseas players to return to the UK within seven days as they step up preparations for the season to be resumed.

West Ham midfielder Manuel Lanzini believes it would be "crazy" for the Premier League to resume playing while coronavirus remains a threat to player safety.

Premier League clubs are working towards a restart as the whole sport battles with the coronavirus pandemic.

Welcome to the Evening Standard's LIVE coverage as the coronavirus crisis continues to heavily impact sport across the globe.

Aston Villa could be forced to finish the season without an incomplete squad due to coronavirus fears, manager Dean Smith has said.

Aston Villa chief executive Christian Purslow has compared the Premier League's 'Project Restart' planning to the Brexit process.

The Premier League has hit back at EFL chairman Rick Parry over parachute payments after he described them as "an evil which needs to be eradicated".

Tomori has been studying towards a degree in business management

League Managers Association chief executive Richard Bevan has warned the Premier League season could be cancelled if clubs do not agree to playing at neutral grounds.

Welcome to the Evening Standard's LIVE coverage as the coronavirus crisis continues to heavily impact sport across the globe.

The nation could be set for a bonanza of live football if the Premier League and Championship are given the green light to restart next month, with talks ongoing to broadcast as many of the remaining matches as possible.

Liverpool have partially reopened their training ground as the Premier League moves closer to agreeing a potential resumption date.

Manchester United midfielder Bruno Fernandes has been named in the BBC's Premier League team of the year, despite having played just five games in the competition.

Liverpool's unbeaten run coming to an end as been voted the best moment of the Premier League season by a BBC fan vote.

Tottenham forward Heung-min Son's stunning solo effort against Burnley has been voted the goal of the season to date in a BBC fan vote.

With the Premier League searching for viable options to finish the current campaign, deputy chief constable Mark Roberts believes those complaining about the finer details must "get a grip".

Welcome to the Evening Standard's LIVE coverage as the coronavirus crisis continues to heavily impact sport across the globe.

Rio Ferdinand, the former Manchester United, West Ham, QPR and England defender, believes there is no viable resolution to the resumption of the 2019-20 season that will satisfy all 20 Premier League clubs.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden remains "really hopeful" over the resumption of the Premier League season, though insists the go ahead has not been given yet.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer insists he wouldn't blame his Manchester United players if they do not want to return to action when the coronavirus lockdown is lifted.

Tottenham forward Heung-min Son is due to return to London next week after completing national service, the club announced.

Up to 50 Premier League players are planning to revolt against plans to restart the season, according to reports.

While the Premier League remains on hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Bundesliga is returning to football stadiums in Germany.

Watford join Brighton and Aston Villa in publicly disclosing opposition to neutral venue plans

The Premier League are set for crunch talks with its 20 clubs on Monday amid the suspension of football.

Man United are fifth in the Premier League, in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup and all but in the last eight of the Europa League and have Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford fit again.

Mark Roberts believes those who say the proposal compromises the integrity of the league need to look at the broader context.

A date of June 12 has been put forward as a suggestion for when fixtures can resume, but there are still a number of factors yet to be resolved before football can return

NHS staff must wait between 48 and 72 hours to hear back whether or not they are carrying coronavirus, but Premier League clubs and players will receive their results the following day

Former English Premier League footballer Peter Whittingham dies at the age of 35, nearly two weeks after an accidental fall.

With sporting competitions almost entirely shut down, fans who want to follow the Premier League can still do it — the Belarus Premier League, that is.

The Guardian selects the best young players at each club born between 1 September 2002 and 31 August 2003, an age band known as first-year scholars. Check the progress of class of 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014

_{Photographs by David Price/Arsenal/Getty Images, Neville Williams/Aston Villa/Getty Images, AFC Bournemouth, Paul Hazlewood/BHAFC, Paul Dennis/TGS/Shutterstock, Clive Howes/Chelsea/Getty Images, Danny Loo/PPAUK, Emma Simpson/Everton/Getty Images, Nick Taylor/Liverpool/Getty Images, Manchester City/Getty Images, Ash Donelon/Manchester United/Getty Images, Jason Dawson/Jasonpix, James Wilson/Sportimage, Simon Bellis/Sportimage, Robin Jones/Digital South/Southampton FC, Tottenham Hotspur/Getty Images, Alan Cozzi/Watford, Arfa Griffiths/West Ham United and Sam Bagnall/AMA}

The objections to restart plans are understandable and the game should pay attention, but ultimately clubs need to play games to survive

With each week the plans become a little more refined and with each week any final decision is pushed back. Football may return, and this is how it may look if it does, but nobody is sure, and any proposed date can only be provisional. Which is as it should be. In an age that often favours decisiveness over the decision itself, there is something vaguely comforting about a process that accepts the wisdom of waiting.

But in the background there is a crucial, nagging voice, and what it is saying is this: if football isn’t prepared to return, at least initially, in a form very different to the one it took before the virus, it may not return for a very long time – and for many clubs that means never.

Our cartoonist on the plans to resume the 2019-20 Premier League season and possible options to complete it

• Buy a copy of this cartoon at our print shop
• Take a look through David’s Guardian archive

As the Premier League weighs up a possible return in June, many questions remain unanswered. From testing regimes to where games will be played, Paul MacInnes takes a look at the key hurdles

• Project Restart: the hurdles Premier League football must clear to resume

Many questions need answers, not least where games will be played and the not-insignificant 100 concerns of club doctors

Without government endorsement of a return to play, nothing can happen. Since the beginning of March, when games were still being played in front of paying crowds, the Premier League has said it would follow government advice on the best way to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.

• Video call to follow league shareholders meeting on Monday
• Coronavirus testing plan still to be approved by clubs

Top-flight players are to hold talks with Premier League executives next week, before any attempt to restart the football season can be signed off.

Players are to be given the chance to air any concerns over Project Restart in a video-conference call likely to include representatives of all 20 clubs.

• Ifab gives green light but clubs expected to stick with it
• Vote needed on whether to allow five substitutions

Premier League clubs will debate whether to dump VAR for the remainder of the season – if it can be completed – after the International Football Association Board (Ifab) said that individual competitions can do so if they want to.

The clubs, who will hold a conference call on Monday, must also vote on another Ifab temporary amendment – whether to agree to the use of five substitutes in matches.

Resuming the season is absurd and the ‘safety’ ideas are terrible, but whatever football decides it must decide together

“You eat alone, you choke.” During the years of plenty it became a habit to compare the Premier League’s wielding of power – always with a note of admiration – to the structures of a mafia family.

It isn’t hard to see why: the hierarchy of captains, the beautifully ruthless sense of unity, of a cartel of self-propelling interests. And yet the thing about mafia families is that now and then those interests start pulling in different ways. In mob lore breaking ranks is sometimes referred to as “eating alone”, with a certainty that bad things follow – and worst of all that bad business follows.

Watford become the third team to publicly oppose the use of neutral venues when Premier League football returns.

The financial squeeze put on Premier League clubs by the coronavirus crisis could be felt across the continent in the coming months as the well to fund massive transfer fees runs dry. For each of the past four summers, Premier League clubs have flexed their financial muscle to splurge over £1 billion ($1.3 billion) on transfers. That has helped spread the wealth of television contracts worth billions across Europe and crucially down the divisions to cash-strapped clubs in England. Now even the world's richest league is facing economic meltdown. Premier League matches have been suspended indefinitely with no return expected before mid-June at the earliest. Broadcasters could be due a rebate worth a reported £762 million if the season is not completed and, even when the games do recommence, they are likely to be behind closed doors, quashing income from gate receipts.

Moreover, a number of major sponsors such as airlines and gambling companies have been just as badly hit by the COVID-19 shutdown, which is expected to lead to a curb on commercial revenue. Rather than the usual arms race for talent, Premier League clubs are fretting about just meeting their wage bills for the next few months. "Many clubs could be threatened by insolvency and transfer plans came to a standstill for most clubs because of the many uncertainties," said Matthias Seidel, founder of Transfermarkt, a website specialising in transfer values. According to Transfermarkt, 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) has already been wiped off the value of Premier League squads. "There's no doubt the actual value of players right now has gone down in all squads," said Brighton owner Tony Bloom. "How much less, I have no idea. It depends on how the next few months play out."

'Vultures and predators'
Such uncertainty has led for calls to do away with transfers entirely to avoid the unseemly sight of clubs, who have asked staff to take pay cuts and in some cases relied on government money, spending money on new players. "If you're trying to get 30 percent pay cuts from existing players, you may have to put a transfer embargo in place," former Manchester United captain Gary Neville told Sky Sports. However, embargoes may only accelerate fears that clubs lower down the pyramid will not survive the crisis. Proceeds from transfer sales are commonly used in the lower leagues to cover running costs and will be needed even more without the regular income of gate receipts to rely on. "I think there will be significant transfer fee deflation," football finance expert Kieran Maguire told AFP. "There will be a significant number of clubs that when some form of transfer market returns, they will be close to going out of business and therefore will accept fire sale prices. "The vultures and predators will pick off good players for very modest fees."

The fear for those reliant on transfer fees, though, is that the damage has already been done. Given the vast sums involved, transfer fees are very commonly paid over the course of a player's contract. Based on accounts published to the end of the 2018/19 season, Premier League clubs owed £1.6 billion in outstanding transfer payments, £900 million of which was to foreign clubs. Maguire warns of the domino effect whereby if one club fails to meet its transfer debt, it could spark a series of defaulted payments on other deals or even worse force clubs into insolvency. "The concern is that financial problems in one league could spread throughout the industry just like the pandemic," he said. Bundesliga chief executive Christian Seifert told the New York Times earlier this month that the transfer market will "collapse" and that "some leagues will understand that money is nothing that is coming automatically every month from heaven." That may have been a slight on the Premier League's overindulgence on transfer fees. But as the biggest spender, the economic earthquake felt by English football will ripple across Europe for some time to come.

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Even though all the cricketing activities remain suspended because of the coronavirus outbreak, Indian opener Shikhar Dhawan is making sure he remains in touch with the game by playing it indoors with his family. Dhawan recently shared a video on Instagram where he is seen playing cricket indoors along with his son Zoravar.

In the video, Zoravar can be seen bowling to his father as the Indian opener defends the ball well on the off-side. The video also has commentary inputs along with crowd noises inserted in the background of the past.

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

Quarantine Premier League ka sabse gripping moment 😅 Dhawan vs Dhawan 💪🏻😈

A post shared by Shikhar Dhawan (@shikhardofficial) onApr 22, 2020 at 8:30am PDT

The 34-year-old captioned the video: "Quarantine Premier League ka sabse gripping moment Dhawan vs Dhawan." Last week, Dhawan had shared a video of him dancing with his son on a popular Bollywood song "Daddy Cool".

"Life is so much fun with this mastikhor insaan! Sachi bolu toh daddy aur beta dono hi cool! Love this little one," the left-handed opener had captioned the video on Instagram.

With the nation-wide lockdown in place due to COVID-19 pandemic, Dhawan has been keeping himself busy with all kinds of different activities at home. He has been sharing all kinds of videos like that of washing clothes to playing and training with his kids to dancing with his wife Ayesha.

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Mid-Day is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@middayinfomedialtd) and stay updated with the latest news

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever

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