Chris Wilder keen for Sheffield United players to start making contact

National reports over the weekend have suggested that full training could began again on Thursday, the day after the top-flight’s 20 clubs vote on the issue as they seek to move onto the next stage of football’s ‘Project Restart.’

Blades players and those at rival clubs in the top flight returned to small-scale training last week.

Should Premier League clubs agree to go ahead with Phase Two, the top-flight season would potentially be on schedule to start again by around June 15.

Leading players including Troy Deeney and Danny Rose have expressed concerns about starting contact training.

But Wilder has stressed that his players want to start playing as soon as it is safe to do so.

He said: “They are obviously trying to get through Phase One as quickly as possible and are talking about it as a minimum of seven days and if everything goes to plan, they will assess it.

“It is an ongoing scenario, rolling on from day to day. It has the ability to pause and change with certain situations.

“But they want to roll it out as quickly and safe as possible and keep everybody on board and on the journey.

“It is small groups of training now and testing and I should imagine that will be the key to go through these two testing periods and make a decision on that quickly.

“Step two is contact and making the groups bigger which obviously has to come as quick as possible to accelerate the small sided games and 11 v 11s and then into a return to planning.”

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