FEARFUL FORECAST AS CHAMPIONSHIP CLUBS LOSE £650M

FULL STORY: PAGE 54

ALMOST every professional football club will be fighting for its future as the coronavirus crisis continues.

But as the latest financial figures are logged, no league seems more threatened than the Championship.

Numbers collated by Kieran Maguire, one of the country’s top football finance analysts, show second-tier clubs made a combined loss of £650million in 2018-19.

Of the 24 clubs who competed in the Championship in that season, only two did not make a loss. One of those, Hull City, broke even, while Rotherham made a profit of £1m.

The eye-watering figures expose the vulnerability of Championship clubs who have spent big on wages to try to reach the promised land of the Premier League.

“Anyone who has looked closely at the Championship in recent years will not be surprised,” said Maguire, a football finance expert from the University of Liverpool.

“And it is vulnerable because a lot of the clubs are reliant on one individual – a club owner who has to cover these losses.

“It only takes the owner’s main business to tip over to cause trouble – and obviously that can happen in these circumstances because no one is making anything at the moment.

“It is a very precarious level at the best of times and it is relying upon wealthy individuals being able to transfer their wealth to the football club.

“Anything that interferes with that chain of cash is a big problem.

“You might be wealthy but if that wealth is tied up in assets, tied up in property, for example, or in stocks and shares, it is hard to convert assets into cash at a time of crisis... which is clearly what we are in.”

The EFL have set aside a £50m relief fund for its members and the Premier League has advanced a £125m payment to clubs in the Championship, League One, League Two and non-league.

But judging by the most recent collection of accounts – which do not include profit or loss from transfers – Championship clubs are going to have to get significantly more financial help than that.

The biggest Championship loss in 2018-19 was the £95m suffered by Aston Villa in their promotion campaign, with players on an average weekly wage in excess of £44,000.

And nearly all Championship clubs appear to have saddled themselves with outlandish salary bills.

Most remarkably, Reading, who made a £45m loss, paid out £40.7m in wages last season while only taking in £18.1m in revenue.

Their extreme but grotesque over-spending on wages is a common thread in the Championship.

And that is why there are fears for the future of so many clubs in these terrible times.