Paul Barber has called for immediate help from the PFA to keep clubs alive during the Covid-19 crisis.

Albion’s deputy chairman, along with technical director Dan Ashworth, remains in dialogue with Lewis Dunk and Glenn Murray, who represent the players union, over a pay cut or deferral.

But Barber believes it is time for Gordon Taylor and the PFA to do more to help secure agreements on a club-by-club basis.

He said: “The PFA are doing their jobs. They represent players and I respect that but it’s clubs that employ players.

“Therefore there comes a point where everybody in this difficult situation needs to come together.

“We totally respect what the players have done with #PlayersTogether. I think it’s a wonderful gesture to support the NHS at a critical time.

“Now we need to also think of clubs and the difficulty many clubs are in. We need some help. Now is the time, it’s not another month or two months to wait, it’s now.

“We are trying to plan in a very uncertain time with no sense of when this thing is going to be over.

“We need to make sure we are as focussed as we can be in making sure our clubs are stable as it can be because we need to protect jobs, we need to protect people’s livelihoods, we need to recognise that people’s football clubs are central to their communities and therefore the ripple effect of football clubs not being here in the future is more than clubs just not playing football.

“It is a very significant impact on the communities we are speaking about and we must avoid that.

“We must avoid having a loss of any football club if we possibly can.”

Barber said he was proud of how Albion’s players were trying to help the club and highlighted private donations they had made to good causes.

He also revealed chairman Tony Bloom had declined offers from non-playing employees to take pay cuts.