The lawyer who helped set up a new Trust to raise money for footballers who were sexually abused as young players has claimed gagging orders have been used by “a number” of clubs.

Chelsea on Saturday apologised to former player Gary Johnson for the abuse he suffered in the 1970s, having waived the confidentiality clause in the £50,000 agreement they made with Johnson in 2015.

That allowed Johnson, now 57, to tell the Daily Mirror last week that he was assaulted multiple times over a three-year period by the club’s chief scout Eddie Heath, who is now dead.

Speaking at the launch of the Offside Trust in Manchester, Prosperity Law’s Edward Smethurst said “calls and emails are coming in all the time” from players claiming to have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements in return for compensation.

“Certainly, the allegations have been made by victims that confidentiality clauses have been used in relation to other clubs but I’m not in a position to independently verify this,” said Smethurst, an award-winning lawyer who also chairs the Madeleine McCann Fund.

“It’s unfolding as we speak. It’s a number. It’s several (but) less than five.”

In Chelsea’s apology to Johnson, the club said they “no longer felt it appropriate to keep confidentiality in place”.

Smethurst, however, said his Manchester-based firm has never told a client to ask for confidentiality in a case that involves possible criminal activity.

“I can’t speak to what Chelsea’s legal advisers told them. I’ve got no knowledge of that,” he said.

“But from a campaigning perspective, we think that some things are so important – the protection of children being one – that clubs should not hush these things up and tie victims up in confidentiality.”

Smethurst is advising the Offside Trust on a pro bono basis and the organisation is actually being run by former Crewe players Andy Woodward and Steve Walters and ex-Manchester City youth player Chris Unsworth.

Woodward, whose harrowing interview with the Guardian newspaper nearly three weeks ago started a wave of allegations that has now swept over the entire game, said he and his partners are “fighting for justice” and trying to support fellow victims.

Higgins’s involvement

The BBC reported this week that they had spoken to six former players who had named youth coach Bob Higgins to the police in connection with the sexual abuse scandal.

Higgins was employed by the Southampton FC youth academy in the 1980s and also worked for the Malta Football Association between 1992 and 1994 before his contract was rescinded.

In 1992, Higgins faced charges of sexual offences against boys in England but was cleared on the direction of a judge when the prosecution offered no evidence.

Among the former players who alleged they were abused at Southampton are Dean Radford and Jamie Webb.

In separate interviews, Webb said ‘the club employee had asked them to write him love letters’ while Radford said he was made to ‘snuggle up’ with the club employee on a couch.

Meanwhile, this week the Guardian revealed that Football League clubs had already been warned about Higgins’s behaviour way back in 1989.

Until recently, Higgins was working for Hampshire’s Fleet Town FC on what has been described as an “informal unpaid basis” but has now left.

Reports in the UK said yesterday that detectives from Hampshire Police visited Higgins at his Southampton residence over the weekend.