Ebbsfleet United Director of Football Steve Lovell has been talking to KSN about the potential issues facing clubs regarding player movements in the summer and the difficulties of clubs who still don’t know if their season is over or not!

Speaking ahead of the National League’s decision to cancel the remaining fixtures of the season, Lovell told us, “I think it’s a difficult decision for everyone concerned and I feel sorry for the people who have to make them as they’re not going to please everyone, but they have to make a decision and that’s the thing!”

“They have to make a decision and everyone has to adhere to it and at the end of the day I think that you can’t talk about football until the Government decides that it’s safe for everyone to go back into these things.”

“The main thing is people’s health and wellbeing – you look at people who are suffering every day and the people who are dying every day and it is a serious matter and football is obviously secondary to this, with the first thing that people take care of themselves and make sure they stay safe and we get through this.”

“I’m sure we will and if it takes another month or two months then so be it – the important thing is for everybody to come through this as a majority of people that we can and be safe so that they can go and watch football at the end of it!”

He went on, “we’ve got to be patient – there’s nothing else that we can do! You can go mad by being at home or you can keep yourself busy and being positive to make sure you come out the other side and that’s the way you’ve got to be.”

“You’ve got to be positive; you’ve got to think that it’s going to end – when it will end, we don’t know, no-one knows. But when it does end, we’ll all reflect what a great time this is to reflect on their lives – I know that my family has – it’s been a time when everyone’s been together and we don’t have time through our busy lives to do the things that we’ve done over the last four or five weeks.”

“That said, it will be nice to get back to normality and have a balanced life but anybody who can turn round and say it’s been a boring time at the moment, I disagree – it’s been a time that we’ve got to accept and life goes on and we’ve got to make sure there’s a lot of people who stay safe rather than catching the virus.”

“It’s a tough time from a job perspective as you can’t do your job! You’re waiting to sign players, you’re waiting for players to become available, you’re waiting for contracts to finish on players, you can’t go and watch games, you can’t go and scout players because nothing’s happening.”

“So, from that aspect yes, but everyone’s in the same boat – all managers, all directors of football or chief exec’s or chairmen or players, everyone’s in the same boat.”

“So, what you’ve got to do is just do the best you can. I’ve got lists of players through the season since I’ve been at Ebbsfleet that I’ve looked at to try and bring in when the season ends.”

“But we don’t know when it’s going to end – is it going to end or when it’s going to begin. Until decisions are made by the League or by everybody concerned, I can’t make any decisions myself on the ins and outs of players at Ebbsfleet.”