John Pemberton on the difficulties of trying to plan for Chesterfield's next season

The caretaker boss is to be taken off furlough so he can start plotting for the next campaign, whether he is in charge or not.

Currently, Chesterfield do not know if next season will start on time (August 8) because of the pandemic.

It has been reported that it could be January before non-league football resumes because clubs have no desire to play games behind closed doors as they rely so heavily on matchday revenue to pay wages.

“At this moment in time I have just got in my head that we will start playing in August like normal,” Pemberton said.

“The only thing that would be a problem (if the season is delayed) is playing your pre-season games.

“At the moment we can’t really plan any pre-season games where quite a few of them would be planned now.

“It is difficult because it is almost like having itchy feet and wanting to get going but there are quite a lot of things that need to be decided before we can actually really move on.

“Sometimes it is hard to sit on your hands and do nothing but sometimes it is the best thing to do because if you start rushing into things you can tie things up that are possibly not quite right.”

On the possibility of a January return, Pemberton added: “If it is going to be January then sooner we know that we can start planning for it and how we are going to work through the summer until we get to January.”

Clubs - including the Spireites - are set to announce their retain list and Pemberton believes they might be able to afford players who would normally be out of their reach because of the financial impact the coronavirus has had.

He told the DT: “We have got the attraction of Chesterfield being a big football club at our level with a fantastic stadium and people might want to come to us because opportunities elsewhere are limited.”