Danny Rose believes Premier League players are being treated as “lab rats” as they gear up for a return during the coronavirus pandemic.

The defender, on loan at Newcastle from Tottenham, has already been a vocal critic of the plan to resume the top flight.

Clubs are due to resume training on Tuesday and Wednesday for socially-distanced sessions but Rose remains sceptical.

“I’m dying to get back to football but just with the things that are happening right now, people are going through this coronavirus pandemic a lot worse than me, I don’t want to be complaining about everything,” the England international told The Lockdown Tactics podcast with Robert Snodgrass and Kris Boyd.

“Just off the fact that people are suggesting we should go back to football, like we’re guinea pigs or lab rats.

“We’ve going to experiment this phase and see if it works or not. I can just imagine people at home saying, ‘Well they earn that amount of money so they should be going back’.”

Rose’s comments come as it was revealed that six individuals connected to three unnamed Premier League clubs have tested positive for the virus.

The Covid-19 tests were conducted on Sunday and Monday as part of the league’s partnership with the Prenetics consortium, and are due to take place twice a week from now on. 40 tests will be carried out at each club in each session.

The league said in a statement: “The Premier League can today confirm that on Sunday 17 May and Monday 18 May, 748 players and club staff were tested for COVID-19. Of these, six have tested positive from three clubs.

“Players or club staff who have tested positive will now self-isolate for a period of seven days. The Premier League is providing this aggregated information for the purposes of competition integrity and transparency.

“No specific details as to clubs or individuals will be provided by the League and results will be made public in this way after each round of testing.”

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