FA chairman Greg Clarke told Premier League clubs it was not “feasible” to expect their remaining matches to be played, while another senior figure told Telegraph Sport: “You tell me whether you think there’s the remotest possibility that anything in the science is going to tell us that it’s going to be safer to play on April 3 than now.”

This summer’s European Championship is expected to be postponed at an emergency meeting of European football stakeholders on Tuesday in order to allow the club season to continue into June and July – and potentially even beyond.

The same senior figure raised the prospect of the calendar being ­redrawn to dovetail with the next World Cup in Qatar, the switch of which to the winter of 2022 had ­already been accommodated by the game.

“One scenario could be that you just work backwards from it and you say, ‘Why don’t we have a calendar season in 2022 and a calendar season in 2021 and we play the rest of this season in October?’” he said.

But many players will be out of contract on June 30 and will also have lost match fitness, raising major questions about the integrity of competitions.

Calling a halt to the season would be no less chaotic. That has resulted in discussions taking place inside some Premier League teams over proposals that could be put forward if the season could not be played to a conclusion. One would be to void the season, but there is an acceptance that would cause many of its own problems with Liverpool so close to winning the ­title.

There would also be the issues of relegation and promotion from the Championship, together with Champions League qualification, which carry huge financial implications for the clubs involved.

One proposal that could be made would be for the top two in the Championship, currently Leeds and West Brom, to be promoted and for 22 teams to compete in next season’s Premier League. The EFL Cup would be postponed for one year to allow extra space in the fixture list and five clubs, instead of three, would be relegated at the end of the season.

One suggestion regarding Champions League qualification would be to allow the teams who qualified for this season’s tournament to keep their places next season and then ­enter any additional sides currently in qualification positions into an ­expanded qualifying phase.

That would mean third-placed Leicester going into a qualifying round for the Champions League, with Liverpool, Manchester City – subject to the Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing – Chelsea and Tottenham holding on to their places in the tournament. But Manchester United, Wolves and Sheffield United, who are all above seventh-placed Spurs, would no doubt object to this.