David Wheeler worried about player welfare during coronavirus outbreak

Wycombe winger David Wheeler fears for the mental health of footballers during the coronavirus crisis.

Matches have been suspended until the beginning of April, and it is expected that will be extended as restrictions grow across the country.

Wheeler is planning to spend the time catching up on a backlog of books and films, but told the Guardian: “You almost lose your purpose a little bit, because there’s no direction to what you’re doing at the minute.

“There is often a lot of talk about players that get injured or are not involved that spend days on end sitting at home and end up getting hooked on gambling or other addictions.

“If they thought it was bad before, it is going to be a hell of a lot worse in the next few months. Are the players really being looked after? I would argue a lot more can be done.

“I would argue that it’s way past the need for more mental‑health provision and psychological help to players within clubs.”

Wycombe are currently eighth in Sky Bet League One having been among the promotion race all season, and Wheeler thinks staying fit and ready for if and when the season does resume will be tough.

He said: “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.

“As a professional athlete, you get itchy feet having a few hours indoors – let alone days on end. It is very difficult to stay fit in relevance to football because you can go for a jog but it’s not the same as football fitness.

“The way it is looking, with the amount of time we’re going to be off, I’d imagine, for health and safety of the players, we’re going to have to have almost a mini pre-season before we set up for the last games because otherwise people will pick up muscle injuries from muscle wastage from sitting around for so long.”