Albion are ready to learn lessons from the Covid-19 crisis as they plan for next season and beyond.

The club are currently working hard at the Amex to make their stadium secure ready for the return of Premier League matches.

But they – and clubs like them - will also be better prepared off the pitch when the time comes to arrange new deals with players and other associates and providers.

A report released overnight by financial services firm Deloitte forecasts a permanent loss of £500 million for the 20 Prem clubs combined, made up of rebates to broadcasters and the loss of matchday revenue from the suspension of competition.

A further £500 million missing from the 2019-20 balance sheets will, it is reported, be recouped in 2020-21 if the competition is able to complete this season and next.

Clubs are forecast to earn around half of what they normally would in matchday revenue in the 2020-21 season.

Paul Barber believes what was already a projected loss for this season will increase by 50-60% due to the break in action and lack of fans caused by the Covid-19 virus.

Albion’s chief executive and deputy chairman said: “Initially, it will up to the leagues and the FA to look at what happened and where in the future we can perhaps make that ecosystem a little bit more robust in places.

“But I don’t think anybody could have foreseen this.

“In the same way as every other business leader is currently assessing their industries and saying maybe, with the benefit of incredible foresight, we could have envisioned this happening at some point, we need to learn how we can do things better and what we can do to make ourselves more resilient in the future.

“These are not going to be answers that are going to come overnight.

“There is going to be a lot of reviewing and certainly from our own club’s perspective, we are now looking at every single contract that we have got and reviewing how we can make that contract more robust and resilient for situations like this.

“I am sure that everyone – our suppliers and the organisations we work with – are doing the same.

“We are all in a phase, hopefully, where we are starting a very slow process of reviewing before we can start looking at how we can start making things better.”

Executives from the 20 clubs will gather for a shareholders’ meeting today, when the final issues will be dealt with ahead of the scheduled restart on June 17.

Clubs will vote on stage three ‘return-to-play’ and match day operations protocols.

It will then be a case of making small amendments to Premier League regulations to reflect the fact that the season will be completed behind closed doors.