It's Tuesday the 26th of May, I'm Jules Breach, he's Andy Brassel and this is Jules and

Andy on Football Rumble Daily.

So much to discuss today, we'll chat about the latest news in restarting football but

also on the flip side, the ending of the WSL and the psychological impact this break

is having on players up and down the pyramid.

Yeah, with that in mind Jules, let's go straight into a conversation I had yesterday with

Dr Tim Rogers, sports psychiatrist with Cognacity, he works with a number of Premier League

and EFL players and clubs and I began by asking him if players at below elite level might

be suffering particular anxiety in the current situation.

For sure, that's true, I mean definitely and it's not just players too, obviously there's

a whole system of coaches and managers and support staff that work with those players

and definitely for those people, many of them, their anxieties and stresses have

risen for them for a number of different reasons.

So if we think of the intensity of the way Premier League players live their careers, you've

written an article about it, what are the sort of common problems that you speak to

players about that might have been exacerbated by lockdown, common stresses in top level football?

Yeah, I think there are certain kind of, there are certain common stresses that are, I

suppose, specific to people who perform high, firstly and most obviously every athlete

has to assess their immediate sporting goals.

And often athletes or people who perform highly, their self-worth and their self-esteem,

perhaps more so than other people can be really tightly bound to their identity as a football

lower.

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