It took Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta’s revelation that he had contracted coronavirus for English football to hit the emergency brake.
And 10 weeks on, the epicentre of the Premier League’s pandemic crisis is back in Bell Lane, a goal-kick from junction 22 of the M25, next door to the Gunners’ nerve centre – at Watford ’s London Colney training ground.
Long-serving Hornets defender Adrian Mariappa’s admission that he tested positive for Covid-19 in the blanket screening of players earlier this week did not just shock the Jamaican international himself.
It was vindication, in plumes of smoke across the Hertfordshire sky, of Watford captain Troy Deeney’s refusal to return to training because of his grave reservations about becoming a