White admits standard has decreased since return from COVID-19: "Everyone can see that and we all know that"

Ian White won through on Thursday night with victory over Mervyn King to begin the European Championship and he will now take on Michael van Gerwen later on Friday evening.

White who hasn't been in the best form as of late admitted he needs to start getting results in these tournaments as well as that the standard has decreased since the return.

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"The last few tournaments haven't been too good for me, gone out of the first round of the World Matchplay and World Grand Prix. I need to start doing well in these because we haven't got that that many ProTours on the floor like we usually have which you know I'm good at. So I need to get good results in these tournaments," said White during his post match press conference.

"You look at the averages over the past few tournaments and they're not the standard that we were at in March. Everyone can see that and we all know that. It's just the case of getting over that line. We've got the Winter Series coming up soon so hopefully five days of that will be nice."

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He also tweeted before the tournament about his preparation and the lack of dart boards where he was staying: "We only had an hour on Thursday. I think with COVID, it wasn't intentional. We've got to get through these times. In Germany we tried to go a local pub but they were all shut and only the restaurants were open""