Peterhead manager Jim McInally says it’s time for Scottish football to start discussing the financial impact of many more months without football.
Following Tuesday’s SPFL EGM the league body’s chairman Murdoch MacLennan said everyone needed to work together to get football restarted by the end of July.
However, Blue Toon boss McInally fears that timeframe is optimistic.
And Scotland’s longest-serving manager believes those running the game need to also address what happens if football can’t resume as early as hoped.
He said: “What concerns me is that I’ve seen Murdoch MacLennan say we need to start planning for the restart.
“But I can’t help think that’s it’s not that simple. I know there are loads of financial implications into next season with the Betfred Cup because they’ve got good sponsorship and TV deals.
“But football isn’t going to happen anytime soon by the look of things so they need to start talking about it and nobody has really mentioned it up to now.
“You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, but the issue won’t go away.
“I want football to restart like everyone else, but I’m trying to be realistic, we’re still in lockdown for another two weeks at least, things won’t dramatically change overnight.
“There’s got to be a contingency plan with various scenarios and one of the scenarios is that we might not be able to play again for many months or even this year.”
McInally believes broadcasters and sponsors need to brought into talks about the way ahead to discuss the ramifications of this season’s Premiership not being completed and the start of next term being delayed.
He added: “It must be scary for the SFA and SPFL because the likes of Sky and BT will have been effected by this virus and people will have been freezing their accounts.
“There’s no way that no broadcaster or sponsor hasn’t been effected by this.
“I think there needs to be talks with Sky, BT, the BBC and all the sponsors and ask what happens if this season can’t be completed and if next season can’t start for some time and then we need to deal with that.
“There needs to be a lot of talking done about the financial aspects. Coming back to the lower leagues and ourselves at Peterhead whatever money we receive from the SPFL or SFA it’s all needed.
“Everyone down the leagues needs their money so there has to be that chat with the companies about the potential financial ramifications if football doesn’t start for a long time and will it be a problem or it not.
“These possibilities exist and we can’t ignore them, we need to talk about them.”
