Huddersfield Town planning to cope without fans

Coronavirus has decimated football finances, taking away just about all revenue sources but not outgoings. Even when the game returns, be it this season, as the Football League hopes, or next, it is likely to be behind closed doors, which Devlin says could be “hugely expensive”.

Without knowing when a vaccine might be found, long-term planning is extremely difficult but Devlin is focused on the next eight months.

“We potentially are looking at maybe up to the end of this year without really bringing in any revenue in terms of playing football without fans in the stadium, which is going to be really difficult for the players, really takes away something from the sport and actually can cost clubs money,” he said.

“We’re still waiting for the protocols but some of the early stuff I’ve seen comes with huge expense.”

No-one can yet be sure if 2019-20 will be completed, or what form the following season will take.

“We’re working on a number of scenarios,” said Devlin. “It was initially working on perhaps playing football again by June with crowds, (then) that looked like it was never going to happen, then it was June without crowds, then it was maybe September. Now some of the advice we are given is that we are unlikely to have crowds into a stadium much before December.

“You can budget for highs and lows, but what’s really difficult to budget for is having your revenue streams dry up almost overnight.

“What we are focusing on at the moment is the next six to eight months. If certain things fall into place come early 2021, hopefully fans will be able to come into the stadium.

“There’s complete uncertainty, but we are working really hard to pull the club through this really testing period, so fans have a club that they can still support that’s in good shape going into the next calendar year.”

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