'The one thing that has haunted me is how many people are losing their lives'

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Paul Barber admits it's hard to talk of a return to action while the Covid-19 death toll continues to rise.

Bruce Talbot

2020-05-02T08:00:00Z

Tomorrow night's Fan Forum will now be held online.

Paul Barber admits he finds it uncomfortable talking about a possible return to Premier League action while the daily death toll from COVID-19 continues to rise.

Premier League clubs met on Friday to firm up their plans for Project Restart, and the hope remains that games behind closed doors can resume in June and the season can be completed.

But the personal cost of the pandemic in the country troubles Albion’s chief executive.

Asked if he was feeling more or less confident about completing the season he said: “I go from day to day if I’m honest. One day I hear news that makes me more positive and then the next day I hear some news and it makes me feel less than positive.

“The one thing that has haunted me from day one is just how many people are losing their lives. It is something I never thought I’d see on my TV night after night after night. Every week I’m happy to answer questions but I’m also very uncomfortable in a way talking about football when the headlines are showing more than 26,000 people have died.

“Of course some of them sadly had underlying health conditions that made them more vulnerable but increasingly as the crisis has gone on there have been many people - NHS frontline workers who were just doing their jobs, young people who got the virus and couldn’t recover and people my age doing normal jobs - who got hit by this virus and were fighting for their lives.

“My mother-in-law is in a care home. I’m very worried every day on behalf of my wife for her safety. My father-in-law is 88, my parents are in their 80s. We have all got family members who are extremely vulnerable in this situation, so I feel very uncertainty about what the next few weeks hold.

“I am confident that around the Premier League table we want to try and finish the season but I’m more and more aware that we have all got concerns about the numbers of people who are losing their lives and the safety of the players and safety of all of us if we do play again.

“It’s a balancing act but it is out of our hands because I think that the government will dictate what is possible and what is not.”