Sweet: Coronavirusis pandemic is the gravest crisis that Luton Town have faced

The current financial crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic has pushed Luton Town into a far graver position than when current owners 2020 took over of the club back in January 2008, plus the Hatters' period in administration six years earlier, according to chief executive Gary Sweet.

Just over a decade ago Sweet was part of the 2020 consortium which gained control after the Hatters’ squad had been decimated by player sales and were swiftly relegated to the Conference following a number of hefty points deductions.

Meanwhile, five years before that, when John Gurney was running the club, Sweet was a founding member of the supporters’ trust, which was then named Trust in Luton, as he helped organise a season ticket boycott, to deliberately force the club into administration, with Gurney leaving after just 55 days in charge.

After seeing the club on the rise once more, reaching the Championship last term, Town are now faced with another massive hurdle to overcome, although this time it is well out of their control, going two months without any match-day income due to the indefinite postponement of the football season.

Sweet said: “It’s more grave than previous times, and I did only help then, but it is more grave now than it was back then on both of those occasions.

“The bottom line is, if you go back to both of those periods – 2003 and 2007/08 – at the end of the day, if we weren’t there back then, somebody would have bought the club.

“Right now there is not really a queue of people willing to buy football clubs, unsurprisingly.

“We are in very precarious position and those who are still willing to buy season tickets and executive packages for next season, and stuck by us as sponsors going forward, it’s all of those people who matter so much to us.

“Because ultimately it’s their club and the fact that we own it is irrelevant really.

“It’s their club for them to enjoy, and they are not able to enjoy it yet, but they are still giving us their money in tough times and without that it would be a really, really difficult situation.”