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Lambert: We've Only Been Tested Four Times, I Don't Feel Comfortable With It - Ipswich Town News

Blues boss Paul Lambert has called for more funding from Government or elsewhere so players in the EFL are tested for Covid-19 on a more regular basis, admitting that he is uncomfortable with the situation as it stands at present.

While the Premier League has a stringent programme of testing for its players and its staff, players in the EFL are tested less regularly.

Town have recently had striker Kayden Jackson and first-team coach Matt Gill test positive, while Lambert himself missed the Gillingham match as he was awaiting a test having shown symptoms having been in close contact with Gill and defender Luke Woolfenden is currently self-isolating for similarly spending time near to someone who had tested positive.

Lambert says the matter is a concern and compares the situation in League One and in the third tier in Germany.

"I think this is where it is wrong,” he said. "I was talking to a sporting director in Germany last night and he was asking how many times I'd been tested and I said four or so. He's been tested 42 times. Forty-two times!

"They get tested in the 3 Liga, which is probably the equivalent of us, they get tested twice every week.

"We're getting tested when you're not feeling good or if you've got problems. The disparity is incredible.

"They’ve been tested 42 times since they've come back, and we've been tested four. And Woolfy, Kayden, myself and Gilly have had to self-isolate for 10 days, so it's incredible, absolutely incredible the way we're going about it.”

Asked whether he and the players are comfortable with that, he added: "I saw Pep Guardiola's comments the other day and he asked why should football be different than anything else, and it shouldn't. Because it's the same world that we are living in.

"I don't feel comfortable with it, and I've never been comfortable with it, way back in March with what the EFL were doing.

"We get tested sporadically. We're not getting the same as anybody else in the Premier League, why is the disparity so big, because of the finances? Well, where are the finances? There's nothing here. There's no helping.

"We are going into lockdown areas, I know it's a national lockdown now, but we were going into lockdown areas where the regions were locked down. You stay in hotels, and you're a wing and prayer really that nobody gets it.”

Tests cost clubs £150 each, which across a squad carried out on a regular basis, runs into tens of thousands of pounds, funds they don’t have with no cash currently coming in through the gates.

Lambert says money for improved testing needs to be found: "One million per cent. Why are we different? There's got to be help somewhere from the Government or something. Why are we different? That's the thing.

"My parents are older, and the other guys' parents are older and you can't see them. When you go home to them you don't feel good. Maybe it's you that carried it.

"Why are we exempt from the same as everybody else, we're not on this pedestal that we're above anybody in any walk of life, we're human beings.

"Football is our job, our sport is football, but we're no different. I'm not any different from you guys [the media] or anybody else. I'm a human being. But we need to be the same as everybody else on that front.”

Does he believe he and the players are being put in a dangerous position? "I think sometimes we are because we don't know. The unknown and the uncertainties.

"For example, some of the guys could wake up on the morning of a game and say ‘I don't feel well’. You have to declare it, they have to get tested and it comes back negative or positive, and then everybody thinks ‘Well, am I going to get it?’.

"Nobody knows where we are but it's one governing body and it should all be the same. How can my friend have had 42 tests since they've come back and I've been tested four or so? The guys have been tested four times as a staff, how is the disparity so big?”

He added: "Brett McGavin, for example, was sent home, and he was getting stripped the other night. So he was sent home on Tuesday night and thankfully he's okay.

"But the signs, in any other normal year you had a cold or a cough they'd say you've just got a flu or virus, but now you're into a different realm really.”

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