The Warm-Up: No wonder Sergio Aguero and the players feel 'scared' to return to Premier League

A phone rings in a luxury villa. A butler sprints out of the Pablo Escobar-inspired mansion, across the peacock lawn and to the Olympic-sized outdoor pool where a professional footballer is sunning himself alongside his wife and nursing a delicious mocktail, relaxing in glorious solitude.

He picks up the phone. “Hello, it’s Chelsea here. Fancy hopping on a plane back to one of the global epicentres of coronavirus and a city with a distinctly uncomfortable population density?

Yes, Project Restart – which sounds more like a failed Think Tank policy from the dying months of New Labour than a strategy to return top-flight football to the nation – cranked into gear yesterday as reports indicated that Chelsea had instructed their players currently abroad to return to the club in anticipation of training starting sometime soon, and Premier League football coming back around June 13.

The 20 clubs will have another conference call on Friday in an attempt to work this through some more. But even as the Eredivisie and Ligue 1 have ended their seasons, English football continues to work towards a return in the not too distant future. Indeed, clubs like Arsenal and Brighton are already training again in some form.

Certain answers about anything at the moment are hard to come by. No one is really an expert in the precise circumstances of what we are all living through because it’s never happened before. And the science isn’t exactly unanimous on how best to proceed from here. But on a human level, it is easy to sympathise with the players who are being asked to return to work (most of them in cities) and engage in a plan which will see them cut off from friends and family and potentially put their health at risk.

Ultra-fit, young athletes are hardly an at-risk group but neither are they immune from this virus. Nothing makes you immune. Not gross wealth. Not youth. Montpellier’s Junior Sambia was placed into an induced coma due to complications from COVID-19.

And as much as we love to watch them, and as much as their return to pitches would undoubtedly lift the spirits of football fans across the nation, neither are they key workers. They don’t care for us when we are sick, they don’t transport us around the country, they don’t stack the supermarket shelves which we take our food from, and they don’t collect our bins to stop the streets overflowing with rubbish.

So it’s easy to sympathise with someone like Sergio Aguero when he says that most players are “scared” to return to work in a job which necessitates physical contact with a lot of other people. Even if testing will be rigorous and widespread amongst players and staff involved, it’s hardly going to be foolproof.

"The majority of players are scared because they have children and families," said Aguero. "I'm scared, but I'm with my girlfriend here and I'm not going to be in contact with other people. I'm locked in my house and the only person I could infect is my girlfriend. They're saying that there are people that have it and don't have any symptoms but still infect you. That's why I am here at home. Maybe I have the illness and I don't even know."

The Friday Warm-Up’s stance remains the same: the aspiration must be to finish this season when it is safe to do so. But reaching a satisfying burden of proof on the second half of that sentence is going to be hard work. Especially for all the players involved.

The Warm-Up waffled on a bit there so we’ll keep this bit brief: yesterday, Paris Saint-Germain were crowned league champions for the seventh time in eight seasons when Ligue 1 declared it would be taking league positions after 28 matches (for almost all clubs at least) as the final league table.

There can be no real argument for PSG being champions: they were 12 points ahead of Marseille with a game in hand. But controversy is on the horizon with Toulouse, now relegated, threatening legal action.

Given they were 17 points away from safety with 10 matches to play you might think it’s a bit of a stretch but the principle should really be the same for any club still technically not relegated given the financial impact dropping down a division would have on a club.

This story hasn’t finished yet.

This is a nice chat with Southampton manager Ralph Hasenhuttl on Sky Sports.

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of Leicester being crowned league champions, as Tottenham failed to get the win they needed in the Battle of the Bridge against Chelsea. So in recognition of that incredible feat, here’s the official Best Moment in Sporting History as Andrea Bocelli takes to the stage at the King Power.

Try to get through that without crying.

Oh, and join us on Saturday evening as we relive one of the most infamous matches in Premier League history, with 'live' coverage of the Battle of the Bridge...