Exclusive:John Mousinho’s revealing spending insight into where Portsmouth now stand in Championship hierarchy after hiking transfer outlay
Pompey have significantly upped up their transfer spending under New Squad Cost Rules (SCR) in the Championship, but John Mousinho has offered a revealing insight into where that now leaves his club in the order of things.
John Mousinho believes Pompey are still competing with sides in the Championship’s lower echelons - even are ramping up their summer spending.
The Blues boss has made it clear his club are still playing financial ‘catch-up’ with the majority of the teams they are vying with in the second tier this term.
This comes despite a significant increase in transfer fees paid for players across a busy summer of player recruitment at Fratton Park.
The club are operating in a sustainable fashion, however, with that strategy meaning they are keen to avoid handing out sizable contracts to players.
That means their wage bill will remain one of the smallest in the Championship this season, while they operate under a new Squad Cost Rules system limiting their spend on player and manager-related costs to 85 per cent of their income - with an equity top-up of £33m over three years allowed.
Taking all that into account, Mousinho is clear where Pompey stand in the scheme of things across a summer where Championship spending reached a record £301.3m.
He told The News: ‘We’ve still got to get everything right.
‘Even with the increased spend I still think, balancing off with the (wage) budget, we’re not all of a sudden going to become one of the league’s big spenders.
‘We’re still competing with the same sort of clubs we were competing with last year. That’s the nature of the Championship.
‘If you look at the increased spend year on year on wages, if you take out the parachute payments, the increase in wage expenditure over the past few years is averaged at a 16 per cent increase.
‘If you compound that year to year that’s absolutely huge and, by the way, that’s taking out the parachute payments.
‘So if you put in the parachute payment clubs, that leaps up to around 27 per cent all together, which is natural and you’d expect that.
‘So to just compete at the level there’s a 16 per cent increase in wage budget every year.
‘To try to go beyond that and try to catch up, because we’ve still been playing catch-up over the past few years, is challenging.’
Mousinho believes Pompey have got their transfer policy right across a period where he has consistently called for growth in all areas of the football operation.
But he revealed the Blues’ financial projections suggest they are still set to reach the ceiling of what the are allowed to spend on players under SCR in the coming years.
Mousinho added: ‘Doing it sustainably is where the club has done really well.
‘We’re trying to be sustainable in so much as working within the regulations - but pushing them to the max. We’re always trying to do that as a club.
‘But there’s only so much we can spend, there’s only so much equity the owners are allowed to put in.
‘Over the next five years, and I’ve seen the calculations, the owners will pretty much max out on how much they are allowed to put into the football club.’