‘Where would you fit it in?’ Lee Bowyer reacts to a potential mini-break in football due to coronavirus

Birmingham City manager Lee Bowyer says his side would be unable to cope with the fixture backlog if a mini-break was to be given the go ahead over the coming weeks.

With the rapid rise in coronavirus cases up and down the country and numerous football teams being once again hit hard within their camps, there is growing pressure on both the Premier League and EFL to come up with a solution.

Brentford boss Thomas Frank called for the next round of fixtures to be postponed in England’s top flight on Thursday morning and now other reports are suggesting that club’s are pushing for the PL to be stalled until January.

Whilst there is no indication that similar is occurring in the Championship, it would be hard to see them not following suit - especially after this weekend has already seen a number of matches cancelled due to Covid-19 outbreaks within certain squads.

Although it is of course worrying to see, there are teams who up to now have been completely unaffected and punishing them by suspending a game of theirs that could quite comfortably be played seems harsh.

And the Blues boss is very much of that opinion, stating that his team simply wouldn’t be able to cope with a congested fixture list in 2022 if a break was to be given the go ahead.

“Where would you fit it in? The schedule is crazy as it is,” Bowyer said.

“No, if there are no problems then there’s no reason. We’ve got no problems here so why would we want any games called off?

“We’ve just got to crack on and play as many games to schedule as we can.

“Look at Rotherham last season they kept getting games cancelled and put back and then they’ve got to catch up and they are playing Saturday, Thursday, Tuesday, Sunday. It’s crazy, you can’t do that.

“We couldn’t handle that if we had to with the size of the squad that we have. I say just crack on and if there are teams with big cases like Brentford then that’s a completely different discussion but regarding us, no.

“We’ve had a few members of staff out and we just carried on.”

Bowyer also confirmed that following a round of testing on Thursday morning that just one squad member had tested positive for coronavirus - youngster Nico Gordon who is already out with injury.

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