With light at the end of the tunnel for the return of football, Garry Monk has warned of the perils of pushing players too far too soon down the track.
The Owls are set to report for phased training next Monday as the game enters into its first recovery programme from the impact of coronavirus.
And manager Monk has laid clear what he believes are minimum parameters before the Championship season can resume.
He said: “If you take any normal situation, players will have anything from seven to nine weeks off over the summer and they will follow a home plan in that period. So we are in that equation now. Yes, they’ve had home programmes but they will be in pretty much the same condition after having a normal summer break.
“So in terms of preparation, this is the biggest concern, in terms of the welfare of the players and managers preparing football teams to play matches. I hear the word ‘integrity’ a lot at the moment and to have integrity we need a proper period of full contact training to get the players anywhere near to be ready for a game.
“And let’s not forget that we’re going to have to go into – and this is the unknown because we have no idea about schedules – a short and intense period of games. We haven’t even got phase three signed off yet, and we’re going to need at least four weeks of phase three, let alone nine games in a short period of time so this is a big concern for all the managers and what we spoke about.
“It’s certainly not as straightforward as just coming back and having three or four weeks training then going straight into games, there has to be the best possible care and that was one of the points the managers were trying to get across in the meeting last week.”