Gillingham manager Steve Evans is confident they will be playing football again in June.

Evans acknowledges he’s no expert when it comes to pandemics but is gearing himself for to a return to football whenever the shackles are off.

With football training tentatively restarting elsewhere in Europe, including Germany, he’s thinking positively ahead of a restart in play.

He said: “I am not a science man, I am not a medic, I don’t have a clue really. I left school and went to play football but I do listen with real care to what the top medics and the top scientists say.

“I absolutely don’t listen when the politicians are on because they spin it all. The encouraging thing is that the politicians are getting driven by the medical advice and the scientists.

“When that head of science talks, they have to talk with facts because there are thousands of medical staff and scientists around the UK and if they were talking bumkun it would soon be known wouldn’t it?

“They are not talking bumkun, they are talking fact. Let’s follow the science and medical advice and I am sure we will be playing football in June. Paul Lambert (the Ipswich manager) doesn’t but Paul Lambert said they would be getting promoted in November.”

Lambert said this week it would be dangerous to ask players to return to action without a full pre-season, as they would get in the summer. Teams would usually be back training at the end of June for an early August re-start.

It's unlikely clubs would get that kind of time to prepare.

The coronavirus lockdown is expected to be extended today (Thursday) for another few weeks but the EFL have already told clubs not to resume training until May 16, at the earliest.

If training can resume in the middle of next month then teams are likely to get two weeks to prepare to go again.

No problem for Evans, who said: “I think we could be playing by the end of May.”

Most have accepted that football will be played behind closed doors when it does resume.

Footballs big problem is that there will be hundreds of players across the EFL out of contract at the end of June and there will need to be agreements in place to extends those deals.

Evans admits it could get complicated, particularly if a player has hopes of moving elsewhere. The Gills have only got about seven players who will be contracted to the club post June 30.

Most are bound to agree short term deals but they won't be the only ones making the decisions.

The Gills boss said: “I don’t see a short term issue but what you could have is that if you get to June 30 or leading up to it, the football club goes to player A and says, ‘we want to extend for four weeks to the end of the season’, player A goes ‘not a chance, I have the chance to go to another club and earn more money, better terms, better conditions, blah blah blah so I am not prepared to do that.’

“Player A might say, ‘I don’t want to get injured, for the sake of three weeks, so I don’t want to sign.’ They might think they are not going to get kept so don’t want to get injured. They might say 'I have two other clubs that have made me an offer, via an agent', which will happen, so they don’t want to extend, that is not just Gills, that is everywhere.

“That will be the same for clubs fighting for the play-offs. There might be players doing really well in League 1, and there are lots of them, with Championship clubs wanting to take them, so they might think, ‘I don’t want to get injured.’”

Football in the Premier League and the EFL is currently suspended indefinitely.

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