Premier League clubs have agreed on a restart date of June 20 in what is a huge breakthrough for their Project Restart plans, according to the Mirror.
The Premier League have desperately been trying to finalise plans to get the season back underway again following its suspension at the beginning of March amid the coronavirus crisis.
And now a big breakthrough appears to have been made with the Premier League closing in on a return in mid-June, according to Dailymail.
The June 20 restart date does however leave Premier League managers just over three weeks to get their squad ready for the eagerly-awaited kick-off.
After the English top-flight was suspended in early March, it leaves clubs with plenty of work to do to get their squads as match-fit as possible after over three months away from the game.
Clubs only returned to small group training again last week, in line with the Premier League’s return-to-training protocols and UK Government guidelines on social distancing.
Premier League stars have only been allowed to work in groups of five so far as clubs look to keep training as safe as possible ahead of the top-flight’s resumption.
But on Thursday morning, training looked a more familiar site as contact was allowed again between players after Phase Two of Project Restart was given the green light.
Newcastle were the first team to publish pictures of their first-team stars in contact training on Thursday.
During a conference call on Tuesday, Premier League players gave the green light to return to contact training during a captains and PFA delegates chat — a step forward that was ratified on Wednesday.
But while some clubs plan to head straight into contact training from Thursday — with only four positive tests out of 1,008 in round three of testing — others will wait for two more rounds of clear results before moving into phase two of training.
