Hatters CEO admits Luton players may be asked to take pay cuts due to coronavirus crisis

Hatters chief executive Graeme Sweet admitted the club could have no option but to ask players and staff to take a pay cut due to the crippling impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

With the season suspended until April 30 at the earliest, then with no income being generated through revenues from match days or ticket sales, it represents a huge hole in Town’s finances for the next month.

The severity of the virus means it’s highly unlikely fixtures will take place at the projected date, and on whether asking Hatters’ players to take a wage cut during the outbreak was an option, Sweet said: “It has to be. I feel sorry for our players because they’re not the heaviest earners in the Championship, by any means.

“But I think everybody – myself included, all the way down – everybody’s got to contribute to this situation.

“We all have to dig in and dig deep in various ways, whether that’s with cash or time or resources or some form of commitment.

“Everybody’s got to pull together in order to make sure that those frontline services can operate, those elderly people are being looked after and all those vulnerable people are taken care of.

“I think it’s fundamental that, when industry stops almost in its tracks, like it does now, it’s quite clear that, due to no fault of our own, companies like ourselves, and many out there, just simply cannot afford to function.

“So there has to be some compromise from a lot of people, from within our organisation and all others, but I’m pretty sure there will be other clubs that will be asking their players and the PFA to help before we will, and probably to a much greater degree than we will, because previously we’ve spent sensibly.”

Sweet revealed that some initial chats had already taken place in the league about deferring wages until the season starts up again.

It is yet to happen at Luton, although communication lines have been opened with the players to keep them up to date with the situation.

He continued: “There have been some discussions amongst Championship clubs about salary deferrals, some quite hefty deferrals, I must say, although we’ve been party to that, we’ve not necessarily been supportive of that at this stage.

“I’ve spoken to a core group of our squad and been very transparent with them, along with one or two other members of staff.

“We have said to them ‘look, there is going to come a day when actually footballers may be asked to help in this situation, because this is something that is much more catastrophic than just a football club, or its staff, this is actually about protection of the football industry’.

“If footballers actually want a career going forward, there are going to have to be some compromises by them and certainly their agents and other people within the business in order to protect it.”

With a number of players out of contract in the summer, they are also facing a nervous wait to see if there are clubs able to afford new deals for them, whether it be at Luton or elsewhere.

Sweet had huge sympathy for those in that predicament too, as he said: “I mean it’s terrible, I really feel for those guys because we can’t really give them very much guidance at the moment.

“We are engaging with the senior pros and bringing them along with all of our knowledge and really I want to do that with them and with the PFA hand-in-hand to make sure we do this as a partnership and a collaboration rather than us go to the PFA, demanding this or that.

“But something may have to give unfortunately and I think one of the reasons why that is because we have staff who are on the living wage here, many more staff than players who are on the living wage here.

“They are ultimately the ones we need to try and protect, because their livelihoods could suffer much more if they lost their positions going forward.

“So our objective is really as much as possible, to protect those jobs first, and in-hand, then we work with the other staff, higher earning staff, and players, to see if there is some sort of contribution we can get from those levels in order to ensure that Luton Town Football Club remains intact when we come back.”

With that in mind, Sweet also went on to state that the club would be doing everything in their power to try and prevent any sort of redundancies during the crisis.

He continued: “We want to avoid that at all costs.

“Effectively, what we’re doing is really trying to treat this period a bit like a pre-season and prepare for when we return, in the same way we would in pre-season.

“We have to lower our cost base during that period, which we do, and we’re trying to not to do anything beyond that at this stage.”