As the Premier League weighs up a possible return in June, many questions remain unanswered. From testing regimes to where games will be played, Paul MacInnes takes a look at the key hurdles

• Project Restart: the hurdles Premier League football must clear to resume

Many questions need answers, not least where games will be played and the not-insignificant 100 concerns of club doctors

Without government endorsement of a return to play, nothing can happen. Since the beginning of March, when games were still being played in front of paying crowds, the Premier League has said it would follow government advice on the best way to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Everton right-back joined Schalke on loan in pre-season and hopes to play against Borussia Dortmund on 16 May

As Jonjoe Kenny remembers the sights and smells that defined his childhood it is tempting, more so at a time such as this, to close your eyes and travel back with him. He can tell what, with a few bumps here and there, is the textbook story of a local boy made good, and Everton games were the focal points throughout. Kenny grew up in Kirkdale, virtually on the doorstep of Goodison Park, and the glimpse of a buzzing County Road brought the kind of sensory assault that would leave thousands pining today.

“It’s about a five-minute walk round the corner,” Kenny says. “On matchdays going to the stadium it was always busy in our area. The chippies were packed, the pubs were packed, and when you’re walking to the game through it all there’s no better feeling. As a kid growing up, it was such a big thing.”

• Video call to follow league shareholders meeting on Monday
• Coronavirus testing plan still to be approved by clubs

Top-flight players are to hold talks with Premier League executives next week, before any attempt to restart the football season can be signed off.

Players are to be given the chance to air any concerns over Project Restart in a video-conference call likely to include representatives of all 20 clubs.

• Statement dismisses Rangers complaints as ‘self-serving’
• Proposals for three-tier league system are abandoned

Directors of the Scottish Professional Football League have snapped back at allegations raised in a dossier issued by Rangers and urged clubs not to back calls for an independent investigation into the handling of a vote to abandon this season.

Rangers, who last month called for the suspension of the SPFL’s chief executive and legal adviser, distributed an extensive document to fellow league members on Thursday as they seek to win the 75% support needed at Tuesday’s extraordinary general meeting to trigger an inquiry. Rangers raised a series of questions over the conduct and governance of the SPFL, whose board was firm in its recommendation the season vote should pass.

As football prepares to start or resume seasons we look at 17 countries to see how close they are to a return

Clubs and the football federation hope for an August restart with a July training phase to step up for a resumption of the A-League, which was postponed indefinitely on 24 March. Five rounds of games, plus the finals, remain. All games are likely to be played in Sydney without spectators, with Wellington Phoenix to be based in NSW for a two-week quarantine before playing. The National Rugby League has the green light to restart on 28 May, which may lead to fixture clashes at cross-code venues such as Kogarah and Bankwest Stadium.

• Scott Duxbury: ‘How is there any semblance of fairness?’
• League would ‘bear no resemblance to the one we started’

Watford have joined Aston Villa and Brighton in voicing objections to the Premier League’s plan to play out the season at neutral venues on police advice, claiming it would be unfair to relegate clubs on the basis of a competition that “bears no resemblance to the one that was started”.

Sitting just above the bottom three when the league was suspended and uncomfortably aware Villa could leapfrog them if they play and win their game in hand, Watford were due to play five of their remaining nine fixtures at Vicarage Road and feel that being deprived of home advantage could affect the number of points they gather.

Illustrator who with the writer René Goscinny created the much-loved comic books featuring the exploits of Asterix the Gaul

On the balcony of a flat in Bobigny, near Paris, one afternoon in 1959, two men – the writer René Goscinny and the artist Albert Uderzo – were desperately seeking an idea for a comic strip. It had to be original, it had to be inspired by French culture and it had to be finished within three months, to go into the launch issue of a new magazine. Browsing through the history of France they settled on an idea that seemed full of possibilities: the history of the Gauls.

From their school days they recalled the name Vercingetorix and decided their chief characters’ names should also end in “ix”. Roman names would end in “us” and town names in “um”. That Eureka moment gave birth to Asterix the Gaul and a series of 38 books that have sold 377m copies in 111 languages, and have inspired 10 animated and four live-action films, a theme park and more than 100 licensed products.

Cellist of the Amadeus String Quartet for four decades

The cellist Martin Lovett, who has died aged 93 after contracting Covid-19, acted as the musical conscience of the Amadeus String Quartet. When the playing of his three colleagues – all Austrian exiles – threatened to become too sweet, Lovett could be relied on to bring them back to the right side of good taste with a finely drawn phrase from his Stradivarius instrument.

Like Hermann Busch, a player he deeply admired, of the Busch Quartet, Lovett displayed qualities that could be overlooked when set against the wayward genius of the leader, Norbert Brainin, the virtuosity of the violist, Peter Schidlof, and the solid accomplishment of the second violinist, Siegmund Nissel. And yet his very dependability, his quintessentially British avoidance of anything that smacked of showiness or gloss, made their own contributions to the quartet’s four decades of success.