Roberto’s Safety Drive

Roberto Martinez has issued a safety warning to his players after the tragic death of Michael Maidens at the weekend which caused the postponement of the Hartlepool fixture.

Maidens died whilst a passenger in the car on Friday evening and his death came just two months after another youngster – QPR’s Ray Jones – also died in a car crash. And Martinez has used the tragedy to highlight just how dangerous the roads can become and he believes that maybe the club should be taking higher levels of care over their players

“When you get so many cases of these horrible accidents it makes you wonder,” he told the Evening Post.

“Maybe we should look after every single member of our club as if they were family.

“I think it’s important we get the youngsters together and have a proper chat.

“It’s about passing on the message to make sure they don’t take things for granted. Accidents can happen and we must all be careful not to put ourselves in situations where we’re taking unnecessary risks.

“After so many cases recently it’s important we all give it extra attention. When you’re young everything around you is new and sometimes you don’t see the danger.

“It’s important that we send that message to the youngsters at our club. There’s a fine line between doing that and worrying about everything, but we have to try to cut down the risks as much as we can.

“We have to take extra care on the road and in everything we do on a daily basis.”

But it’s not just on the road that football has been rocked this season. Walsall’s Anton Reid died during training at Walsall and Sevilla defender Antonio Puerta died after a heart attack on the pitch during a match. And when you factor in Leicester’s Clive Clarke having a heart attack causing the abandonment of a Carling Cup tie earlier in the season it’s been a torrid time for some of football’s stars. “These heart problems have come all of a sudden and I believe they’re a result of the extra demands in modern football,” Martinez added.

“The physical and fitness side of the game is huge now and footballers are putting their bodies under massive pressure.

“We’re doing all we can to spot these problems, with all youth teams now doing tests as standard procedure.

“You have to do as much screening as you can and be extra careful, although it’s impossible to detect all the problems.

“There are three kinds of heart problems and you can only detect two of them.

“We’re talking about one sportsman in 200,000 who could be suffering with the type you cannot spot and that’s quite a scary statistic.”