Coleman 'underestimated' impact of coronavirus on his Accrington players after mass outbreak

Accrington Stanley manager John Coleman admitted he 'underestimated' the impact that coronavirus would have on his players following a mass outbreak at the club last month.

It was reported that 17 players and two staff members tested positive for COVID following last month's 1-0 home win over Fleetwood Town, prompting a two-week shutdown of the club.

As a result, Accrington have only played seven league games this season, the least in the division, four fewer than next opponents Northampton.

And not only that, Coleman has also revealed he is now seeing the knock-on effects of coronavirus after players had to spend a fortnight in isolation, unable to do any training.

"It's become a massive problem and I've got to hold my hand up, I've underestimated the toll it's taken on us," Coleman told the Lancashire Telegraph. "We're losing players through soft tissue injuries as well, players are trying to get up to speed with their lungs.

"It's just far from ideal but you've got two ways of going at it and we had a good chat with the players and we said 'we can feel sorry for ourselves or we can get on with it and do our very, very best', and that's what we're going to do. We'll do our very, very best. We won't use it as an excuse, we won't hide behind it, we're going to get through.

"It's going to be hard times but there are people who are a lot worse off than us. There are people fighting for our lives so we should be blessed that most have come through it relatively unscathed and we've just got to work on our fitness, get our touch right, get our energy levels up, get our enthusiasm going in the right direction and play every game like our lives depend on it."

Speaking ahead of Saturday's trip to Northampton, Coleman added: "It's totally unprecedented. Our next concerted effort is Northampton and we certainly can't look any further than that.

"I've watched them play and I know they can be a handful. They've got good players who can hurt any team in our league so we've just got to try to get ourselves as fit as we can, as strong as we can and give it our best shot.

"We've got four or five who are struggling to train this week and that's not ideal with the amount that we've lost already. It's a case of patching everybody up and getting a team out there for Saturday."