Town manager Paul Jewell believes there are clubs in the Championship gambling their futures on winning promotion to the Premier League. Despite Championship sides voting in favour of Financial Fair Play rules ultimately aimed at keeping spending within their turnover, plenty of clubs have been splashing very significant cash this summer.
Blackburn led the way, paying Huddersfield £8 million for former Blue Jordan Rhodes, while Nottingham Forest, Bolton, Wolves and Cardiff were also amongst the division’s big spenders during the close season.
Jewell warns that some clubs may pay the price further along the line: "There are a lot of teams in our division now with their eggs in one basket and if they don’t go up I think we could see a few more teams à la Portsmouth.”
Although the Financial Fair Play rules came in this season, there will be no sanctions for breaking them for two years and clubs will be allowed to spend beyond their turnover by amounts decreasing annually until 2015/16.
The Town manager’s comments echo those made by chief executive Simon Clegg when speaking to TWTD in May: "You’re playing a very, very high risk game if you chase [the Premier League] 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.”
The Blues’ biggest fee this summer was the £1.5 million rising to £2.5 million paid to Peterborough for Paul Taylor, a figure somewhat dwarfed by some of the spending elsewhere.
Jewell says the Championship is a very tough division with plenty of clubs believing that the Premier League is their natural home: "It’s as difficult a league to get to the top of as you’re going to come across throughout Europe.
"There are 18 teams in this league that have been in the Premier League at one stage or another and a lot of them have been in the Premier League a lot more recently than we have.
"We have no God-given right because we’ve got tradition and history. That’s the same with most clubs in this league. It’s up to us to do it now and create more history in the coming years rather than looking back.”