Fulham boss Marco Silva keeping fingers crossed that Sheffield United clash goes ahead amid rising Covid-19 cases

A number of games this weekend across the country have been called off because of cases of coronavirus at clubs, with United’s last scheduled game falling victim when QPR informed the EFL that they had too many players either with the virus or self-isolating to fulfil the fixture.

As things stand Monday’s game is on, and Silva said his club are doing “everything we can to avoid the situation” of the game being postponed.

“I am sure other clubs are doing the same, but even when you think you are doing everything well and doing everything to protect yourselves and the people around you, you never know what can happen,” he added.

“It is fingers crossed, but nothing has happened to us over the last few days or weeks.

“But in London the situation is very different. I am sure every single club is doing their best but sometimes you just need some luck.”

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United had already changed certain procedures around their Shirecliffe training base before the recent spike in cases, as they attempt to prevent an outbreak of coronavirus as the Omicron variant spreads around the country.

"The other things that we are doing is just all the precaution that we possibly can; changing the meeting rooms to ones with more ventilation, smaller meetings, less meetings, two buses again, individual rooms,” manager Paul Heckingbottom said.

“Everything that's just common sense really to limit the chances - we are going to get Covid cases but we don't want to get close contact cases. More time outside, that type of stuff, we have just been really tight on that, working with the Doc and getting all the advice and mitigating as many possible things as we can.

“We were already on with it. The landscape is going to get worse - not here but out and about. We may have more cases, we are trying to be ahead of the curve and be prepared as best we can.”

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