Social distance between the Premier League and people's everyday reality has never felt so great

As the financial impact of the coronavirus grips, worried employees up and down the country will be on hastily arranged company conference calls listening to find out if they are still employed, having their pay reduced or placed on furlough - temporary leave.

Families will be Googling furlough and then anxiously working out percentages to see if they can still meet the mortgage or rent for the next few months, at least. And perhaps just as worrying, what state will their industry be in if and when they return?

Yesterday I spoke to two close friends who were made redundant and today I will say goodbye to long-term colleagues placed on furlough.

My wife's wedding photography company is at a temporary standstill and my friend's business that employs more than 30 people has been forced to make redundancies as orders stopped virtually over night.

Scenarios to be repeated across this county and globally for the foreseeable no doubt.

The guidance page on COVID-19: support for businesses on the GOV.UK website has suddenly become necessary reading for many but it's difficult to imagine the government had football clubs with millionaire owners in mind when rolling out the scheme.

The Coronavirus Job Retention means the government pay staff placed on furlough 80 per cent of their wages, to a maximum of £2,500 a month.

The Guardian recently revealed the Premier League’s 20 clubs made record revenues of £4.827bn in 2017‑18. But just two weeks after the league suspension, Tottenham, Newcastle United and Norwich City have all applied for the taxpayer-funded job retention scheme.

All three clubs have furloughed non-playing staff while continuing to keep playing squads on full pay.

Spurs are the eighth richest club in the world, have profits of £68m, owned by Bahamas-based businessman Joe Lewis who is worth £4bn, their chairman Daniel Levy is paid £7m and the players on average earn £70,000 per week.

"This isn't what it's designed for," said Julian Knight, the chair of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. "It's not designed to effectively allow them to continue to pay people hundreds of thousands of pounds, while at the same time furloughing staff on hundreds of pounds."

At a time when families could face decisions such as buying food or paying the rent, critics say it's an abuse of the scheme and exposes the crazy economics of football.

“Highly paid football players are people who can carry the greatest burden and they should be the first ones to sacrifice their salary, rather than the person selling the programme or the person who does catering," Knight added.

Ironically, most players are fully aware of their privileged position. The majority are committed athletes who have made the most of their abilities to compete and - with help from agents - take the lion share of money from a multi-billion pound industry.

Many top footballers in England would likely take a cut or deferral and are just waiting to be told when and how. Premier League and EFL clubs are due to discuss a possible collective wage deferral at a meeting with the PFA today.

Barcelona players took a 70 per cent reduction Juventus agreed to a freeze, while Championship clubs Leeds deferred and Birmingham's top earners took a 50 per cent hit.

Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe today became the first Premier League figure to take voluntary pay cut.

Brighton have already agreed to pay match day staff for the rest of the season and so far player wages at Albion have not been reduced.

They also donated match day food to homeless charities and pledged to offer 1000 tickets to NHS staff- an initiative repeated by other Premier League clubs.

“If this crisis continues for some time and we don’t have matches, of course we have got to look at our cost base," said their chief executive and deputy chair Paul Barber.

“It’s a very difficult situation when your income disappears overnight but all of your costs remain. We can’t rule anything out."

Albion have shown football can be a force for good and clubs do need to take measures to protect jobs and to ensure they are ready if and when play resumes.

But clubs furloughing non-playing staff while continuing to keep squads on full pay is a very poor message for the Premier League to send out at this time.

News of player wage reductions should have come first.

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