Wycombe winger on a promotion bid halted, the challenges of inactivity and how coronavirus threatens small clubs
It is a peculiar time for professional footballers without the carrot of a match at the end of a week. Last Saturday Wycombe Wanderers were due to travel to Burton Albion but, with every
Football League match suspended until April owing to coronavirus, David Wheeler ended up spending 90 minutes not on the pitch but on the sofa, bingeing on episodes of All or Nothing, a behind-the-scenes docu‑series centred on Manchester City. “You train nearly every day for 10 months of the year, so geared towards a particular goal and, especially for the teams that are at the top end or bottom end of the table, it’s very high-emotion, high levels of dedication and concentration at this point of the season and so for it to be frozen in time is very, very strange,” the 29-year-old winger says.
Wycombe are eighth in League One but three points off an automatic promotion place with the climax of a unique season still to play out. Some clubs have shut up shop, leaving players to train in isolation, some are training sporadically after deep cleans, having introduced stringent measures on hygiene, particularly in gym areas, while for others it is close to business as usual as they await further government advice or updates from the game’s governing bodies.