Sweet: Premier League clubs should be doing more to help during coronavirus pandemic

Although Luton chief executive Gary Sweet doesn’t want to go ‘cap in hand’ to the Premier League for financial help during the coronavirus pandemic, he does believe the top flight clubs should be doing more to help out lower league sides in their time of need.

With the football season suspended until April 30 at the earliest, which at this moment still looks an incredibly unlikely date to restart, clubs such as the Hatters face a huge challenge to sustain their finances over the next few months.

EFL chairman Rick Parry stated at the weekend he wasn’t keen on the ‘begging-bowl culture’ and didn’t want clubs to just start asking for handouts.

Although Sweet could understand his point of view, he said: “I’m a fan of it! You guys know my beliefs anyway – I think the distribution of funding across the leagues is wrong.

“It was wrong when we were in the Conference and we were in League Two and when we were in League One, and it’s wrong now.

“I think there are two things football can take out of this and that is that Financial Fair Play as it is at the moment, absolutely proves that it doesn’t work – hence I am convinced that there will be some clubs that go to the wall over this period.

“And the second thing that we need to re-look at is how funds are distributed, and whether there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or not in the Premier League.

“You have to say that the Premier League – and some of their clubs – need to understand that actually without these football clubs and the pyramid below it, it shouldn’t exist.

“Football has to exist as a family here, and I’m not saying that we should just go with the begging bowl alone, we have to help ourselves of course, I think that was Rick Parry’s point.

“He didn’t want us to go merely cap in hand to the Premier League from the outset before clubs had tried to help themselves, and that’s absolutely right.

“But trust me, we are doing everything we possibly can to keep Luton Town Football Club afloat.”

When asked what he thought the Premier League, who are reported to have a reserve fund of £1.5billion at their disposal, could do to help the clubs during these uncertain times, Sweet continued: “Let’s talk about what happens as a society. Those that are privileged have to help the unprivileged.

“Those that have got resources at the moment, whether they’re cash resources, or resources of time, or whatever it may be, if there’s any way those resources can be used to help one another at the moment, it is now.

“There’s no point in wealthy individuals or big businesses holding on to cash and counting their interest right now if, actually, what they’re going to be doing is prolonging the problem, or actually holding business back and the people they need to trade with, when things do get back to a sense of normality.

“There’s no point in that, that’s the same in football.”

The EFL announced last week that it had released a £50m short-term relief fund to help teams with cash-flow issues.

Championship clubs received their remaining £800,000 award payment from the Premier League on Thursday, although this was money already owed to them, while they can also apply for a £584,000 interest-free loan.

On how that will help the Hatters, Sweet said: “We have received some of it, but just to make sure that you know, the amount we have received is money that was due to us anyway.

“Whilst it’s helpful, and it sounds like a lot, the £50m isn’t an additional sum of money.

“It helps us just in the interim, that short-term period. It is by no-means anywhere near enough for a club.

“The situation with football clubs is generally that it’s not a sustainable model, football is not a sustainable business for clubs generally.

“The common theme here at the moment is, you’ve got too many clubs that have got huge amounts of debt.

“You’ve got too many clubs that are overspending on their monthly P (profit) and L (losses), their P and L have got a massive negative gap.

“So I am delighted that Luton isn’t necessarily one of those, however all clubs operate on a really tight cash leash, because that’s what makes us competitive, that cash is always utilised.

“So even though financially we are pretty stable, even if the games had continued as normal this year, we were hoping to break even.

“As everybody knows we have got a salary cap for players, players haven’t got contracts that are huge in length and the only debt we do have is other short-term creditors.

“We are going to have to use all of those resources of course, and what that means is what we’ll be doing is building up some debt, which will be interest-free of course, which is something that we don’t really feel very comfortable with going forward.

“Ideally we’d like to run a business debt-free, but it’s not possible at this time.”

“Most of it was from April and May, there is a little bit of it from rounding up payment on the basic award right at the beginning of next season, and then we can pull forward some money from the beginning of next season if we wish to."

Meanwhile, when asked if they would be applying for the loan as well, Sweet added: "Yes, that’s a part of the 50m package.”