Tony Bloom has been praised for “doing the right thing by hundreds of staff” during the Covid-19 crisis.

Deputy chairman Paul Barber, head coach Graham Potter and technical director Dan Ashworth volunteered to take pay cuts for April, May and June to help cope with a dramatic loss of revenue.

Barber said: “It was typical of Tony that, when we first mooted this idea two weeks ago, he didn’t want to do it.

“That says everything about the type of person Tony is, everything about the type of chairman he is and we feel we’re lucky to be at a club with an owner like ours at a time like this.

“Not only is he doing the right thing by us, he’s doing the right thing by hundreds of staff, not just in the football club but in the charity.

“If we can just take a small piece of that pressure off him, then it’s absolutely the right thing to do.”

Player wage cuts could follow after Premier League talks continued yesterday.

Barber accepts football has attracted some unwanted publicity in recent days.

He added: “Football works hard at its image. Every club tries its best to do the right things and the Premier League and EFL do great things as well, as do the leagues up in Scotland and across the whole of the UK.

“We’re very aware of how important our public image is and also what a responsibility we have overall to our communities.

“Certainly any criticism hurts, because it matters. No one likes to be criticised either individually or collectively or industry-by-industry. We’re no different.”

But we also know we live our lives in the public eye so we understand how important people’s opinions are.