OXFORD United stand to lose about £500,000 if they have to play the remainder of the season behind closed doors.

That is the assessment of the club’s finance director Tim Davies if the measure is brought in by the EFL in a bid to help tackle the spread of coronavirus.

While English football has so far avoided taking such measures, U’s head coach Karl Robinson feels action is inevitable.

In that context, a temporary suspension of Sky Bet League One, in the hope crowds could return when play resumes, would be far better financially.

It is an unprecedented situation, in peacetime at least, and any disruption to the schedule will cause problems across the EFL.

Davies, though, felt the sales of Shandon Baptiste and Tariqe Fosu to Brentford in January meant United would not slip into trouble by the potential upheaval.

“We’re going to receive some instalments in the future and you can always raise money against those so that would totally help us,” he said.

“We budget for what the crowds are going to be moving forward.

“If we didn’t have any match ticket income it would probably cost about £500,000 from the remaining home games of the season.

“That’s assuming there aren’t play-off matches, otherwise it would be more.

“For all businesses it (coronavirus) is a complete curveball, not just football.”

Losing out on significant income would not be ideal, having earlier this week published accounts which show a £4m deficit for the 12 months up to the end of June 2019.

Despite the alarming figure, the increase has been put down to a lack of player trading in the period covered, with £4.4m due to show up in the next set of figures.

Overall, Davies felt the picture was looking brighter.

He said: “We’ve now paid off the ex-shareholders, paid off the arbitration and a lot of the old creditors, so we’re actually in a much better position than we were.

“It’s always difficult and we are reliant on our shareholders to fund us, but that’s the same as any football club.”

The figures did not feature the profit and loss account, which had been included in previous years.

But Davies, who joined United in October 2018, said: “I’m used to filing abridged accounts with other companies and I hadn’t realised what we had filed in the past.

“There’s nothing sinister about it, it’s just standard practice that you file what you need to at Companies House.”