Sheffield Wednesday rule out travelling for friendlies

Premier League clubs have been given permission to play warm-up games no more than a 90-minute drive away as they prepare for the resumption of the 2019-20 season, and Charlton Athletic have already indicated they will do so if given Football League approval.

Monk is concerned a lack of contact training will leave his squad without the necessary physical resilience to injury but other concerns mean the only friendlies they are likely to play will be against one another.

He will be carefully monitoring which players have the fitness to perform in nine games in about a month.

“We’ll try to fit in in-house games as much as we can, probably not so much friendly games from the outside because of the risk that comes with that,” he explained.

“With the health side of it, the risk side of it, we’ll probably do more in-house games. That’s the acid test. There’s a lot of thought that goes into it now.

“We have a week less (contact training) than we thought and we’ve got to be prepared, whether it’s rotating a lot of players or more minimal changes.”

The Football League will debate increasing the size of matchday squads to 20, with five substitutes permitted, but Monk says it will have no bearing on how many of his nine out-of-contract players and five loanees he tries to keep until the end of the season.

“The squad size is the squad size and the main factor will be the physical side of it, who can cope with these types of games in this period and the understanding of whose contracts we can extend beyond this period,” he said.

“Those conversations are going on, whether that’s the out-of-contract players or the loans, we need to gather that information as quickly as we can. When we know what the squad looks like, it’s who’s physically capable and ready to play these games.”

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