Watford captain who was recently in the news for questioning the logic behind Premier league’s project restart has once again slammed the process and has accused the officials of failing to address the very simple question.
Troy Deeney said “I think the concern is very much that phases two [full contact training] and three [playing matches] have not been clearly laid out, There’s been a lot of, what I would class as very simple questions, that haven’t been answered. For example, you can talk about the BAME situation. Government guidelines are saying that it’s four times more likely for people of colour to get the illness and twice as likely to have lasting illnesses but there’s no extra screening, there’s no additional checks being done on any players because it costs too much money. Simple things like that are where people are asking questions and it’s not being answered. When people can’t answer the questions, you start to panic and start to worry.”
Joey Barton had accused Troy Deeney of being selfish when the Watford captain called on to not restart the premier league but Deeney said that he had no issue in not playing football even if it meant he would not receive any money.
Troy Deeney said “I’m desperate to play football, it’s my job, I’ve got the best job in the world. But there has to be clear and safe measures for everybody, not just me. I saw Tammy Abraham say his dad has asthma and he lives with him so he has concerns. It’s not just players at the bottom who are trying to stay in the league it’s concerns right across the board. I have had a lot of texts from players who are worried about coming out and speaking. I would say 98 per cent are very much aware that phase one is very good, I would say 65-70 per cent of people are concerned with phase two I’d say even higher after that. There’s a bigger question to be had here morally as well. We see a lot about care workers and key workers not getting tested and people dying in nursing homes, and things of that nature. Yet we’re expected to have just short of 3,500 tests per month as football players and PPE for all the staff. How long will it be until that’s the players’ fault? Look at these prima donna footballers that are getting all this preferential treatment when there’s people dying on the street. That was posed by one of my colleagues, as of five-six weeks ago the NHS was in dire straits, it was put on footballers to make donations which was already going to happen but when politicians are calling us out, there’s an underlying message that no matter what we do we’re painted to be the bad guys.”
