The hardest day of Martin's managerial career

After a decision was finally made to curtail the 2019/20 season on Tuesday, Russell Martin admitted he had the toughest day as a manager on Wednesday, telling players they would not be coming back next season.

With a high number of players out of contract at the end of June, Martin's playing budget for next season is set to be hit heavily by the coronavirus pandemic hitting all football clubs around the world.

And with a big number of players out of contract, Martin has the opportunity to shape the team Paul Tisdale built into something of his own for the future. However, it meant spending Wednesday on the phone delivering the bad news to some of the players.

"Yesterday was the toughest day of my managerial career, letting the people know who I was and was not keeping hold of," he said. 2I would have preferred to do it face-to-face but obviously we couldn't do that at the stadium with the snooker being on, so I had to do it in a combination of video calls and phone calls. It was really difficult to tell some players they were being let go.

"It will be a really difficult situation for clubs and players to manage budgets next season but we had to make the right decisions for the club and what we want to achieve next season."