Shock Wrexham and Birmingham City transfer revelations should worry rest of the Championship | OneFootball

Birmingham City & Wrexham may be spending big, and this may cause problems in a division in which clubs are already pushed to the financial limit.

Newly-promoted Birmingham City and Wrexham are being linked with some colossal money moves this summer, and that could cause trouble for a lot of the other clubs in the Championship.

These two clubs raced to promotion from League One in 2024/25, with Birmingham running up a record-breaking 111 points from their 46 games and Wrexham 92. Birmingham returned to the Championship after just a year away, while this was a record-breaking third consecutive promotion from the National League for Wrexham.

All indications are that neither club wishes to hang around in the Championship for long, either. Wrexham are understood to have already submitted an offer to Fulham for their captain, Tom Cairney. He's out of contract at Craven Cottage this summer but, according to talkSPORT's Alex Crook, he could be offered £50,000-a-week to head to The Racecourse Ground next. Sources at FLW have also indicated that Lewis O'Brien could be another player Wrexham target heading into the Championship.

Birmingham, meanwhile, have been linked with some pretty high offers themselves, including the Peterborough United winger Kwame Poku, who has been offered a reported £30,000-a-week to go to St Andrew's.

Birmingham & Wrexham could be spending big for 2025/26

Offering Cairney £50,000-a-week would mean that, according to Capology estimates, he'd become one of the highest-earning players in the Championship.

For Wrexham, this would also be a huge increase on the £30,000-a-week that he's been estimated to be on at Fulham, although Alex Crook did also state that bonus payments mean that Cairney's actual take-home pay is substantially higher than that with bonuses and add-ons.

It would also be around 50% higher than their highest earner during the 2024/25 season, Jay Rodriguez, was making, and it's four and a half times the estimated average salary for the division of just under £11,000-a-week.

It's a similar situation at Birmingham, although their wage bill last season was higher, in no small part because they'd just been relegated from the Championship while Wrexham had only just been promoted from League Two. Were Poku to join on a wage of £30,000-a-week, he wouldn't be one of the highest earners in the Championship, but he would be earning 10% more per week than their highest-paid player this season, Ben Davies.

Other Championship clubs will be watching these revelations anxiously

The Championship is already a financially precarious division. The 2024 annual Deloitte's money report for football revealed that a 10% increase in revenues across the division throughout the 2022/23 season - the last for which they have calculated them - meant that, for the first time in six years, clubs made more money in revenue than they spent on wages.

But this was about as far as the good news went. They still spent 94% of their total revenue on wages alone in 2022/23, and Deloitte reported that no single club generated an overall profit before player trading, with the division recording an overall loss of £316m.

£200m of the total revenue earned by Championship clubs came from the five clubs receiving parachute payments following Premier League relegation over the previous three seasons. This season's estimated wage bills show clubs in receipt of parachute payments occupying the top four places in their cumulative wage bills.

Figures from Capology

The performances of clubs getting relegated from the Premier League and promoted straight back has only served to highlight the enormous advantage that clubs with parachute payments have over the rest. Birmingham and Wrexham aren't in receipt of these, but big spending by promoted clubs would only even further accentuate the distortions that already appear across the division. The pressure on other club owners to spend even more just to keep up could be about to get even greater.