Clubs will be forced out of business by 'catastrophic' consequences of coronavirus outbreak

Luton Town chief executive Gary Sweet has delivered a stark warning about the 'catastrophic' consequences of the coronavirus for clubs in both the Premier League and EFL, predicting some will be forced out of business before the season eventually resumes.

The season is currently on hold until April 30 at the earliest but a longer delay appears inevitable, particularly after the government ordered a three-week lockdown of the entire country on Monday night.

Northampton chairman Kelvin Thomas previously reassured fans that the club are in a 'relatively strong position' to handle these unprecedented chain of events, but the same can't be said for many teams up and down the country.

Whilst Sweet believes Luton are also able to cope in the short-term, he believes that with no income generated by match-days, ticket sales, or other such avenues, it is going to hit them and their fellow clubs extremely hard, even those in the top flight as well.

Speaking to the Luton News about the impact of the virus, he said: “A turning point, yes. Catastrophic, yes.

“When we resume I will guarantee you that there won’t be 72 clubs in the Football League, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s not 20 in the Premier League.

“This is going to hurt some clubs very, very badly, very, very quickly. We are not necessarily a club that is going to be hurt this month, next month but we’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure that we can get through too.

“The worst possible case scenario is that we don’t have a game all this season again, and our season is cancelled.

"We then have to get through to next season before we start bringing an income in, and that’s what we are working on at the moment.

“The plan always is to try and keep the business intact without having necessarily to lose people or resources that rely on us for their income, but that is going to be pretty difficult to achieve.”

EFL chairman Rick Parry has also warned that the impact of the coronavirus could be long-lasting.

He said: "The idea that this is going to be neatly over in June and next season starts in August, I think is wishful thinking. I think there's going to be a knock-on effect for 18 months so we need a lot of flexibility.

"We've already been looking at measures to control costs. In the Championship, wages represent 107 per cent of turnover of clubs.

"That is completely and utterly unsustainable in any climate. In this climate, it comes home to roost very quickly when there's no money coming through the door.

"We need to have better cost-control measures. I'm sure we will because, if this doesn't focus minds, frankly, what will."