Blues chief executive Simon Clegg believes clubs will be taking a big risk if they chase the dream and ignore the Financial Fair Play rules which come in next season. Championship clubs voted in favour of the new rules last week but with sanctions for breaking them not enforced for two years.
Clegg admits that the two years grace period could potentially tempt clubs to throw everything at getting promoted in the next couple of seasons: "That’s a very good question because it does provide scope for people to chase the dream for the next two years, but you’re not going to chase the dream on one-year contracts.
"Players will expect contracts to be two years or three years, so you’re playing a very, very high risk game if you chase that dream based on the principle that there will be no sanctions for two years and you don’t achieve it because you could end up being placed in a very difficult financial situation where you have to break even at that point.
"This is a staggered approach to allow existing contracts to run out, which is not unreasonable. If you’ve got players on three or four-year contracts, you’ve got to give some time to allow those to run out.
"But the general movement of direction is right for football and it’s right to protect the long-term interest of the game in this country.”
He admits that potentially dire consequences haven’t prevented clubs from chasing dreams before but, with 21 of the 24 Championship clubs voting for the measures, says most evidently want to run on a more sustainable basis: "It hasn’t stopped clubs before, but people have been talking about this for decades, about how football has got to get in control of its finances.
"It’s suddenly coming home to roost that this is happening, and it’s got to happen otherwise you’ll find there’ll be more clubs like Portsmouth and Port Vale.”
In addition to the administration-hit Pompey and Valiants, Clegg is aware of other clubs who will have difficult summers: "We’ve now reached the close season, clubs have got no revenue coming in, or very little revenue coming in between now and August, and I think you’ll find that some clubs will struggle over this close season.
"I’ve spoken to a number of clubs who have struggled to get through to the end of this season and are concerned as to how they are going to struggle through the next three months.”
He expects one of the consequences of the new rules to be clubs increasingly looking to the lower leagues for new recruits: "More looking to bring players up from the lower divisions will probably be one of the implications of Financial Fair Play.
"I think that some players are going to catch a big cold this summer when they realise that the levels of contracts that they’ve had in the past [are no longer available]. No player likes going backwards financially, they all aspire to be earning ever-increasing sums of money. This summer will be a reality check for many of them.”
While the staggered approach to the implementation of the new rules means that clubs like Town with rich owners such as Marcus Evans can still spend limited amounts above and beyond their turnover, ultimately Clegg believes teams dropping out of the Premier League will be difficult to compete against.
"I think we need to be very clear that with the increase in parachute payments to four years, it becomes increasingly hard to get up into the top division,” he said.
"Clubs that are coming down have got considerably enhanced parachute payment softeners that are going to give them a financial advantage. Therefore we need to be up there in the top flight of football sooner rather than later.”