The vote on the League One salary cap has been put back until Friday having previously been scheduled for tomorrow. Town are among the clubs to have spoken out against the proposal.
The Blues would be among the clubs most hit by the cap, which the EFL proposes being set at £2.5 million for League One, £1.25 million for League Two and £18 million for the Championship.
In their last season in the Championship Town's overall wage bill was £18.95 million with player wages understood to have made up around £11-£12 million of that figure.
After relegation, many players’ salaries dropped as a result of clauses in their deals, by as much as 60 per cent in some cases, however, the player wage bill is almost certainly still more than double, perhaps three times higher than the proposed limit and will be one of the largest in the division.
It’s understood the wages of players aged under 21 wouldn’t count towards the £2.5 million figure, which is believed to include basic wages, bonuses, image rights and other elements of contracts. Squad sizes would ultimately be limited to 20 senior players aged over 21 after a period of transition with eight of those homegrown.
However, player contracts signed prior to the cap being implemented would only count as a £1,300-a-week wage in the season ahead rather than at their true level.
Fines or points deductions would be issued for clubs breaking the cap and it’s proposed that for every £1 a club strays over the limit they would be fined £3 with potential transgressions judged by an independent disciplinary commission.
The proposal, which will be a simple yes/no question, needs two-thirds of the clubs in the division, 16, to vote in favour for it to be instigated. Last week, Portsmouth chief executive Mark Catlin said he was aware of "an ever-growing number of clubs which may vote against it” but still felt it might be passed.
Town’s general manager of football operations Lee O’Neill has said he is no fan of the cap which hampers owner Marcus Evans’s ability to inject cash into the Blues.
"I understand why it’s on the table and why clubs are looking at it and it brings to light the financial implications around football at the moment and trying to level the playing field from a financial aspect,” he told TWTD.
"From an ownership point of view, if you have that luxury of having an owner that is willing to or able to invest more money into the club because he wants to, this obviously reduces the ability to be able to do that and that I don’t think is fair.
"I think Financial Fair Play was put in place to look at those elements, to help the clubs who are big clubs with big fanbases, and that can economically work for most clubs if it’s adhered to. We’ve stuck to that, we’ve definitely adhered to the Financial Fair Play stuff.
"The salary cap has got to be voted through and it’s something that is being talked about. I’m not necessarily a big fan of it for obvious reasons.”
Evans was at the club for two days last week to talk to O’Neill, manager Paul Lambert and many of the squad individually, as well as well as off-field staff.
It’s understood the Blues owner, who has been more hands-on and at the club more regularly over the last couple of seasons, reiterated that he remains committed to the youth-focused, attractive-football-based five-point plan outlined in 2016 and has no plans to sell any of the club’s prized assets this summer.
Elsewhere, former Town striker Frank Nouble, 28, has joined League One new boys Plymouth Argyle having left Colchester United at the end of the season.