Revealed: The League One club spending £6,000 on testing their players for coronavirus

The League One side, who are competing with Sunderland for promotion, currently have two players in self-isolation.

And MacAnthony was keen to ensure all his players and staff were tested after they recently faced Portsmouth who, despite having no cases themselves, recently faced Arsenal – whose head coach Mikel Arteta tested positive for coronavirus earlier this week.

But in a revealing video on his YouTube channel, MacAnthony has explained the difficulty in obtaining testing kits and the substantial cost involved.

“The two players we have in isolation were asked to ring the 111 number, and all they were told to do was stay at home,” he said.

“There's been no form of 'how do we get a test to find out if we have it', and that doesn't help our club because we're all back in training next week. The last thing we need to do is have a player who has it, and then pass it to all the players and staff.

“So I'm scrambling around yesterday, as is our CEO, to find out how we can get these players tested. We asked our local doctor, they can't tell us anything or come in and test everyone at the training ground.

“We ring around - we rang Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, even Millwall who I believe are doing testing - to find out if anyone has an idea as to how we can get these tests done.

“In the end, our CEO came across a private company and I approved the spend. I think it's costing us £6,000. Testing kits are £150 each which is mad, it's crazy.

“Those kits probably won't get to us until Monday, so then we're going to test the players in isolation, the players at the training ground, the staff and then it'll be 48 hours until we know if anyone has it.

“Then we can make a plan as to what we do the next few weeks while the season is on hiatus.”