Rotherham United v Cardiff City - Paul Warne having problems spreading the love

Vaulks will be welcomed back to the New York Stadium, where he played from 2016 to 2019, for today’s Championship game.

“I’ve kept in contact with loads of my players and lots have gone on to good things,” says Millers manager Warne proudly.

“People outside the club don’t see the amount of energy and love we give the players and they give it back treble.

“I just treat people the way I’d want to be treated myself.”

Building those relationships are much harder at the moment, says Warne, who hopes he will have to do it with new signings soon.

“If I went to another club and tried to get to know the staff and build an environment I wanted to work in, it would be impossible,” he admits. “When people have finished their sessions, they’ve got to get off. It makes it even harder to get players back from injury because they can’t use the treadmills in the gyms.

“It’s hard to spend time with players and if you talk to them indoors you’ve got to have a mask on but I can’t moan because people are losing their lives.”

Warne’s squad prepared for today’s match by sitting in individual cars in the training ground car park.

“On Thursday, we did team meetings with the lads but the analyst had to put all the clips together, then we had to record ourselves doing the meeting, talking over the meeting and putting lines on it like we were (Gary) Neville and (Jamie) Carragher, then they get sent out to the lads,” he revealed.

“All the lads have to be in their cars to watch the meetings, then go into their cars again to watch the next meeting about Cardiff.

“To some people, that might not sound like a big deal but because I’m a teacher really, I need to see the lads have got it, I need feedback, I need to ask them questions and pull them up and tell them to point at the screen to show where they think they should be.

“The whole idea of having a training camp is that it’s a team ethic, all the staff should eat at the same time as the players, you can’t have that any more.

“We nearly got it to the stage where we could have a couple of players in the gym at any one time, now you can’t.

“It’s all the peripheral things which make it harder.”