Majority of Millwall staff furloughed as chief executive also gives opinion on talk of wage deferrals for players

BY RICHARD CAWLEY

Millwall chief executive Steve Kavanagh has revealed that the majority of the club’s staff have been furloughed.

The scheme has been set up by the government to help businesses cope with the financial impacts of the coronavirus.

Staff furloughed under the scheme will be paid 80 per cent of their salary by the government  – up to £2,500 a month.

“The majority of staff have been furloughed, and have been since March 14 which is when effectively we shut The Den.

“That was from the Derby game when really our income and our business stopped. Our business stopped on March 14.

“We are using furloughing, strictly in line with the government guidelines to maintain all our workforce. They don’t want people being made redundant because people aren’t working.

“We are furloughling them to allow access to the government scheme and maintain everyone’s employment, including now it looks like zero hour contracts can come into this.

“It allows us to get funding for people on the edge of the club as well, to get money to them, to allow them to survive through an extremely difficult period for the whole country.

“It allows us to make sure we maintain as much, if not all of the business, when we get the other side.”

There has been talk of football clubs seeking wage deferrals for their playing squad.

Asked about that, Kavanagh said: “Like across all employees, the players are obviously targets because they are the high earners.

“Our intention is to try and pay everybody in full right the way through, if we can, until such time that it becomes impossible.

“Hopefully because no-one can spend any money they might have built up a little buffer.

“But it is our intention to pay people in full, to support the government and economy to do our bit for the country and keep things going. We don’t know how long this will be and that uncertainty makes things difficult.

“If there was a club-wide scheme across all the leagues that said: ‘We’re going to do this’ then out of solidarity to other clubs we will do that. At the moment we’re not considering a unilateral decision on wage deferrals. We’d like to try and avoid that if at all possible.”