Chief executive Nigel Clibbens says the club’s ongoing use of the Government furlough scheme is designed to protect jobs at Brunton Park.

A number of Blues staff are still on furlough while certain other employees at the club are on 80 per cent of their normal wage.

Clibbens said the situation was being reviewed every week as United progress through the latest stages of the pandemic.

The chief executive also made reassuring comments about the job security of those on furlough, saying the Blues were a "tight ship" who wanted to retain people.

“We kind of look at it every week,” he said of the furlough situation.

“The driving factor behind the furlough has been the lockdown of the club’s activities more than the need to maximise claims.

“Obviously you want to claim everything that you’re due and not a penny more.

“The fact of the matter is we’re closed for retail because we’re non-essential retail, so we need to fund the people who would normally work in retail.

“Similarly with commercial, that’s locked down because people haven’t got much to spend, and similarly with the academy, aged Under-9 to Under-15, that got closed down, so it’s right that they’re furloughed because they’ve got no work to do.”

Clibbens said some staff at the club were shouldering more work than normal.

“People like the media team probably have more pressure on them this time because of the squeezed games,” he said.

“It’s different for individuals, which makes the situation even more difficult as a whole, because what you end up with is some people who are having to go the extra mile, and then some people might be sat at home wondering about the future, but then two weeks later the rules change and we’re saying, ‘Come back, we now want to open the shop and let’s get ready for another kit, so give us everything you’ve got’.

“It’s really difficult and hard on the staff and we just try and be as supportive as we can, and protect jobs.”

Clibbens said United are “looking ok” to get through this period of the Covid-19 situation, having received Premier League bailout funding and income from player sales as well as the help from the Government’s job retention scheme.

Asked if this meant jobs were safe at Brunton Park, he said: “The way the club is structured is we are a very lean operation. We have a very flexible workforce who will turn their hands to many things as well as their core job.

“We haven’t got a raft of people to reorganise around here. We run a very lean ship.

“If we want to continue to prosper as a football club we need to be retaining our people and investing in them, and investing in the club for the longer term, and riding out the short term, so we’re not getting longer-term damage by making short-term decisions.”

United’s decision to place some staff on furlough came in the early stages of the current winter lockdown.

The director, meanwhile, said there were reasons why the wage reductions accepted by some other employees did not extend to the playing side of the club.

“Last March and through the first period leading up to November, we paid everybody in full, on time, and nobody has left the club for cost reasons,” he said.

“When we got to November and it looked like we needed to rethink for the rest of the year, and then we got locked down again in January and we reviewed it, and we knew that we could no longer give everybody their 100 per cent amount of their wage.

“We had to reduce that to 80 per cent, so some people have been getting that during the furlough period.

“That was a really tough decision to make but it’s continuing at the moment. It is difficult with things like that, but we think we can get through this, we’re reasonably comfortable and we’re just going to keep going.”

In terms of the first-team playing and coaching department, Clibbens said: “What we decided right from the start with the football side of the business was that to ensure we were competitive on the field, and we are a football club that’s trying to progress, we needed to absorb as much pain as we could away from that area.

“That’s just the reality of running a football club. We did that, so in terms of our spending there’s been no coronavirus impact on our normal spending plans.

“It’s been known for a long time that we’ve had to cut back and be cautious, and that has stood us in good stead. We’ve managed to keep the pain away from the football side as much as possible, and we’ve even been able to do new deals for players.

“We’ve done extensions for players, staff and Chris [Beech], so that kind of spending is not going down.”