Where Wolverhampton Wanderers Stand
Wolverhampton Wanderers’s estimated squad cost ratio is 88.1% against the Championship’s 85% limit, putting them roughly £4.2m/yr OVER of cost headroom. The summer 2026 window stands at £38.5m banked from sales against £29.0m committed on signings, counting only the fees that were published. Every figure here is this tracker’s own estimate, built from filed accounts, published squad records and the rule as the EFL has described it. A first-year parachute of about £55m is the reason the denominator is what it is. Take it away and the ratio does not move a little, it moves by tens of points.
Squad cost ratio, 2026/27 · estimated
88.1%
green line 85%6th-lowest ratio of the 24
Parachute, 2026/27
£55m
year 1 of three · income the club did not have to earn
Shortfall at 85%
£4.2m
a year of squad cost against the 85% allowance of £114.8m
Squad registered
—
of 25, with the homegrown floor at 8
Net effect of this window
—
on the annual squad cost, from the deals this page can see
Squad turnover
—
against last season’s squad, which these pages do not yet carry
The Clock, What’s Counting Down
—
DAYS TO JANUARY WINDOW OPENS
1 JAN 2027
—
DAYS TO JANUARY DEADLINE
1 FEB 2027 · 11PM
—
DAYS TO SEASON END
1 MAY 2027
—
DAYS TO CONTRACT EXPIRIES
30 JUN 2027
The number in one line: £119m of squad cost against £135m of income, which is 88.1% where the rule says 85%. The owner top-up would cover all of that: £15m of equity in a season is worth about 11.1 points of ratio here.
19 of the 24 clubs in this division project above the line on the same method. That is not a quirk of one club’s accounts. Championship wages averaged 96% of revenue in 2024/25 before amortisation and agent fees were added, so a rule set at 85% of income lands on a division that has been running at something closer to 120%. The first season of real-time monitoring is going to be noisy.
The last filed accounts
Revenue, FY2024/25 (13 months)
£172m
Premier League
Wage bill
£163m
95% of revenue, against a divisional average of 96%
Pre-tax result
−£15.3m
Fosun International
A 13-month period after the year-end moved to 30 June; on a comparable 12 months the club made £1.5m. £117m of player-sale profit held the loss to £15m.
How much of this is estimated: the accounts above are as filed. Everything for 2026/27 is a projection, because the season is seven games old and no club files interim figures. The ratio model on the Headroom tab is adjustable, so if you think the revenue or the wage bill is wrong, change it and watch the number move.
Incomings & Outgoings
Summer 2026 window, completed and announced business only. 11 in and 9 out, of which 3 (15%) carried no published fee. A deal enters this table at a medical and not before: ADVANCED means terms agreed and the medical taken or booked, DONE means a club has announced it. Anything short of that is interest, however well sourced, and interest lives on the Rumours tab. An undisclosed fee is counted at zero here rather than guessed, so every total below is a floor rather than an estimate — which is the single biggest difference between reading a Championship page on this site and reading a Premier League one.
Summer 2026, Out
| Player | To | Fee £m | Wage £k/wk | Cost freed £m/yr | Profit £m | Status |
|---|
|
Summer 2026, In
| Player | From | Fee £m | Wage £k/wk | SCR cost £m/yr | Status |
|---|
|
Fees Out (sales)
—
Disclosed fees only
Fees Committed (buys)
—
Disclosed fees only
Net Window Balance
—
Sales minus buys, on disclosed fees
Annual Cost Freed (outs)
—
Wages plus the amortisation that leaves with them
Annual Cost Added (ins)
—
Amortisation plus wages plus an agent fee
Net SCR Swing
—
What this window did to the annual squad cost
Wages are not published for Championship players and are carried at zero rather than invented, so the wage columns above read £0 and the cost columns understate. The fee columns are what the clubs or the reporting disclosed. This is a floor on both sides.
Why the totals are a floor, not a number: Wolves published a fee for 3 of 11 arrivals and 2 of 9 departures. Premier League pages on this site can total a window to within a few million because the fees are reported; in this division they are not. Everything built on transfer spending here — the amortisation line, the net balance, the book values — is therefore a lower bound. 1 of the deals on this page were recorded from the other club’s announcement, because the club’s own published record did not carry them.
Loaned in
| Date | Player | From | Until |
|---|
| 19 August 2026 | Jordan James | Rennes | End of Season |
| 2 September 2026 | Sean Neave | Newcastle United | End of Season |
Loaned out
| Date | Player | To | Until |
|---|
| 29 July 2026 | Tolu Arokodare | Ajax | End of Season |
| 1 September 2026 | Hwang Hee-chan | Schalke 04 | End of Season |
| 1 September 2026 | David Møller Wolfe | Hamburg | End of Season |
| 2 September 2026 | Sam Johnstone | Celtic | End of Season |
| 11 September 2026 | Santiago Bueno | América | End of Season |
| 12 September 2026 | Pedro Lima | São Paulo | End of Season |
| 31 July 2026 | Leon Chiwome | Colchester United | End of Season |
| 6 August 2026 | Lewys Benjamin | Telford United | End of Season |
| 10 August 2026 | Ethan Sutherland | Exeter City | End of Season |
| 15 August 2026 | Adam Harrison | Malvern Town | 12 September 2026 |
| 24 August 2026 | Conor McLeod | Falkirk | End of Season |
How loans land in the rule: a loaned-in player costs the borrowing club whatever share of the wage it agreed to pay and nothing in amortisation, because no fee is capitalised. That is why a club close to its line borrows rather than buys. A loaned-out player frees the wage and keeps the amortisation, which is why selling is the only thing that really moves the number.
2025/26 season, in
2025/26 season, out
Last season's business is not yet carried on the Championship pages. These two tables are the shape it will take; the Premier League pages have carried it since launch, and it is on the list.
Spending Headroom
The Championship’s line is 85% of income, flat, with up to £15m a season of owner equity allowed on top (£33m across three years). Everything below is adjustable: the defaults are this tracker’s projections for 2026/27, not filed figures, so put your own in.
One definition is not public. The EFL has published the headline (85%, the equity top-up, real-time monitoring) but not the full calculation. This model follows the Premier League’s shape — wages plus amortisation plus agent fees, over revenue plus player-trading profit — so the number here is comparable with every other page on this site. There is a well-argued reading in which the Championship’s version is a pure cash measure that excludes amortisation and nets transfer cash inside the income line instead. On a division where most fees are undisclosed, that reading would swing this number hard in both directions from window to window. When the EFL publishes the definition, this model changes and the changelog will say so.
Disclosed fees banked
—
from completed sales this window
Disclosed fees committed
—
on completed signings this window
Equity top-up left this season
—
of the £15m the rule allows an owner to inject in one season
Annual constraint, squad cost ratio model
Squad cost = player & manager wages + transfer amortisation + agent fees. Denominator = income + player-trading profit. Edit any figure:
EFL SCR · green line 85%
—green 85%
—
With the full £15m owner equity top-up applied
—equity is worth about 11.1 points here
—
What-if: add a signing
Added annual squad cost
—
amortisation + wages + est. agent fee
SCR after signing
—
vs the 85% green line
Room after signing
—
against the 85% allowance
Practical shape of the January window: —
Change any figure above to model your own number instead of this tracker’s.
Rule of thumb for this division: a Championship club’s whole allowance moves by about £0.85m for every £1m of income. At Wolves’s projected income, one point of ratio is roughly £1.35m a year — which is to say a single mid-table signing on a three-year deal is a measurable share of the whole constraint. The shortfall of £4.2m is about £4.2m of squad cost that has to come out, or £5m of income that has to come in.
Caveats on the defaults: Parachute £55m plus central ~£12m against ~£110m of lost broadcast; commercial and matchday both fall. Wages assume relegation clauses off £163m. Amortisation is a projection rather than a sum of known contracts, because most fees in this division are undisclosed and cannot be spread over a contract nobody has published. Treat this as a planning tool, not a compliance calculation.
The Rumour Mill
Everything on this tab is short of a medical. That is the line: a deal that has reached one sits in the Ins & Outs table, and everything below it (an offer, an agreement in principle, personal terms with no fee agreed, a bid lodged) is here, counting towards nothing until it moves. Nothing is tracked here yet for Wolverhampton Wanderers. The Premier League pages on this site carry live rumour cards with a stated deal stage, and the same treatment is coming to the Championship; it needs a source of Championship transfer reporting reliable enough to be worth putting a number against, and that is the next job rather than a done one.
What this space will hold: a card per credible link, each with the stage it has actually reached — interest, talks, agreed, medical — and what it would do to the ratio above if it completed. The site’s rule is that nothing enters the Ins & Outs tab until it is announced, and nothing enters this tab below the medical threshold.
The January window opens on 1 January 2027 and shuts on 2 February 2027. Under real-time monitoring, that is also the first window in which an EFL club can be stopped from registering a player because of a ratio it is breaching at the time, rather than one it breached two years ago.
Squad & Book Value
28 players, as listed on 12 September 2026. Tap a column to sort. Fees, signing dates and contract ends are published for almost nobody in this division, so most rows carry none and the table says not published rather than guessing. The 3 rows that do carry a fee are this window's disclosed deals; their contract length is a three-year assumption, shown in amber, because no club published the term.
| Player |
Pos |
Fee £m |
Signed |
Contract End |
Yrs Left |
Amort £m/yr |
Book Value £m |
Mkt Val £m not published |
Profit If Sold £m |
Est Wage £k/wk |
|
Market values and wages are carried at zero rather than estimated, so the profit-if-sold column is not yet meaningful on these pages and the wage total reads £0. That is a stated gap, not a claim that this squad is free: the wage figure the ratio model actually uses is the club-wide projection on the Headroom tab. Filling this column properly means a wage estimate per player for 685 players across twenty-four clubs, and a bad estimate here would flow into every number on the page.
Squad Book Value
—
Disclosed fees only, so a floor
Annual Amortisation
—
Current squad only, on a three-year assumed term
Est. Squad Wages
—
Not published for this division; see the caption above
What the book value tells you here: the squad carries £29m of disclosed book value across 3 players. Everything else on this page arrived free, on loan, through the academy or for a fee nobody published, and carries nothing. In a division where a sale is the main way back inside the rule, a squad with no book value is a squad whose every sale is close to pure profit.
Amortisation Runway
Transfer-fee amortisation locked into future seasons by the contracts this page can see. Every undisclosed fee is missing from these bars, so read them as the minimum already committed rather than the total.
EFL Squad Registration, 2026/27
A Championship club registers 25 players over 21, of whom no more than 17 may be non-homegrown. The familiar “eight homegrown” line falls out of those two numbers, and only binds if the club fills all 25. Players born on or after 1 January 2005 are under-21 for this season and play without occupying a place, provided they are on a permanent contract.
Senior players
24
against a ceiling of 25
Under-21, exempt
4
born on or after 1 January 2005
Homegrown, on the proxy
5
floor of 8 · see the caveat below
Read that homegrown number carefully. It is a nationality proxy, not a training record. The homegrown test asks where a player spent three seasons before he turned 21, and that history is not published for most Championship squads. This page counts players registered as English or Welsh, which for a division like this one is a strong indicator and a long way from proof. It will overcount an English player who came through a foreign academy, and undercount a player of any other nationality who came through an English one — and the second of those is common. Treat it as a shape, not a count. The Premier League pages on this site carry real training histories per player; matching that for 24 more clubs is the largest single piece of work left on these pages, and it is named in the changelog as such.
The loan trap: a loaned-in player must be registered whatever his age. A 19-year-old on loan takes a senior place; the same 19-year-old on a permanent contract does not. For a division that borrows as heavily as this one, that is the rule most likely to cost a club a registration it wanted.
By position
Goalkeepers
3
3 senior, 0 under-21
Defenders
8
8 senior, 0 under-21
Midfielders
8
7 senior, 1 under-21
Forwards
9
6 senior, 3 under-21
Sanctions & Compliance History
What the EFL can do, in the order it does it, and what it has done to Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Step one · the usual one
Registration embargoTransfer embargo
EFFECT: the club may not register players, or may register only under conditions (free transfers, loans, a wage ceiling), until it is back inside the rule
Why firstBecause under real-time monitoring the EFL can see the breach while the window is open. An embargo stops the thing causing the problem; a points deduction only punishes it afterwards.
How it endsBy getting back inside the line, usually by selling. This is the mechanism that makes January in this division what it is.
Step two · the one everybody remembers
Points deductionPoints
EFFECT: set by an independent panel on the scale and persistence of the breach. There is no fixed tariff in the way the Premier League has one
Precedent in this divisionUnder the old Profitability and Sustainability rules: Birmingham City −9 in 2019, Sheffield Wednesday −6 in 2020/21 and −12 on administration in 2025, Derby County −9 plus −12 for administration in 2021/22, Reading −6 and later −1, Wigan −12 on administration and −8 for late wages, Bolton −12 on administration, Portsmouth −9 and −10 across two administrations, and West Bromwich Albion −2 in April 2026. The Championship has taken more points off its own clubs than any other division in England.
What changesAlmost every one of those landed a season or more after the money was spent, on a squad and often an ownership that had already changed. Real-time monitoring is designed so the embargo arrives first and the deduction becomes the exception.
Wolverhampton Wanderers · on the record
Nothing foundWhat has actually happened here
No financial sanction foundThis tracker has found no points deduction, no fine and no registration embargo against Wolverhampton Wanderers under the financial rules. That is a statement about what is in the public record, not a clean bill of health: ten of the twenty-four clubs in this division do have a record, and it is on their pages.
And the rule is newThe Squad Cost Rules start this season and have not been tested on anybody. A clean history under Profitability & Sustainability says nothing about a cost ratio, which is a different test measured on a different clock.
The Championship’s record is the argument for the new rule. West Brom’s two points in April 2026 are the clearest case of all: the breach was a three-year cycle that had already closed, and it only became a breach when the Club Financial Reporting Unit changed its own treatment of a discretionary deduction and applied the change backwards. Whatever else the Squad Cost Rules do, they move the intervention into the window where the money is actually being spent.
The Accounts
FY2024/25 (13 months), as filed. Premier League
Revenue
£172m
FY2024/25 (13 months)
Pre-tax result
−£15.3m
before any player-trading adjustment
A 13-month period after the year-end moved to 30 June; on a comparable 12 months the club made £1.5m. £117m of player-sale profit held the loss to £15m.
Owner
Fosun International
as recorded at the last filing
Ground
Molineux
capacity 31,750
The division around it
Championship revenue
£942m
2024/25, down 2% on the year
Aggregate operating losses
£436m
up 5% on the year
Of which parachute payments
£185m
to a handful of clubs, not to the division
The broadcast line is the one that moved. Championship broadcast revenue rose 3% to £461m in 2024/25 on the EFL’s new domestic deal with Sky, reportedly worth £935m over five years, plus new international agreements. It is the only revenue stream in the division that grew. Every other line went the other way.
Rules & Compliance Status
Every regime that applies to Wolverhampton Wanderers, the limit, and where the club stands. From 2026/27 the Championship runs its own Squad Cost Rules, replacing the Profitability and Sustainability regime that capped losses at £39m over three years. There is no UEFA layer: no Championship club is in Europe, so there is one line, not two. The full rulebook is here.
COMPLIANT
CLOSE / UNDER PRESSURE
PROJECTED OVER
Compliance calendar
Through the seasonREAL-TIME MONITORING
1 Jan 2027JANUARY WINDOW OPENS
2 Feb 2027JANUARY WINDOW SHUTS
30 Jun 2027FINANCIAL YEAR ENDS
Dec 2027FY27 ACCOUNTS DUE
EFL Championship · live from 2026/27
Projected 88.1%SCR. Squad Cost Rules
LIMIT: squad cost ≤ 85% of income · plus up to £15m a season of owner equity, £33m across three years
BasisSeason, monitored in real time rather than assessed after the fact. The Club Financial Reporting Unit sees the position while the window is open.
What countsPlayer and manager costs including transfer fees, against an adjusted revenue base. The full definition has not been published; this page models it on the Premier League’s shape so the number is comparable with the rest of the site, and says so on the Headroom tab.
WolvesProjected 88.1%, which is 3.1 points above the line. The £15m equity top-up is worth about 11.1 points here, so it would close the gap on its own.
ConsequenceTransfer embargo first, then a points deduction set by an independent panel.
EFL · retired from 2026/27
ClosedP&S. Profitability & Sustainability
LIMIT (historic): £39m of losses across three years, with deductions for infrastructure, academy, community and women’s football
Why it wentIt tested losses long after they happened, which is how a club took a deduction in one season for money spent in another. The Championship voted 20–4 to replace it.
What survivesThe final cycles still have to be reported, and a club carrying an unresolved P&S issue carries it into this season. The rule itself no longer governs new spending.
25-man squad & the homegrown floor
CONDITION: 25 players over 21, no more than 17 of them non-homegrown · unlimited under-21s on permanent contracts · loanees must be registered at any age
HomegrownThree seasons, or 36 months, at a club affiliated to the FA or the FAW before the season in which the player turns 21. A registration test, not a nationality test.
Wolves24 senior players and 4 under-21s exempt. The homegrown count on this page is a nationality proxy and is flagged as one on the Squad List tab.
Income · the thing that sets the allowance
Parachute, year 1Parachute payments
RECEIVES: about £55m in 2026/27 · 55% of a Premier League equal share in year one, 45% in year two, 20% in year three
Effect on the ruleIt is income, so it lifts the 85% allowance by about £47m a year against a club without one. That is the single largest input into Wolves’s ratio, and it is not something the club earned this season.
What happens when it stopsNorwich and Watford are on these pages as the worked example: both saw broadcast income fall by roughly three quarters in one year when their parachute ended, and both are still adjusting the wage bill downwards two years later. The cliff is the rule’s real sanction.
Where “FFP” went, for this division: what people still call FFP was, in the Championship, Profitability and Sustainability. It is gone. In its place is a cost ratio that bites during the season rather than after it, and an owner allowance that is capped in cash. If someone asks whether Wolves have an FFP problem, the precise answer for 2026/27 is a ratio, not a loss.
The Whole Division, Bean Counted
All 24 clubs for 2026/27, ordered by projected squad cost ratio, lowest first, so the table runs from the most comfortable club to the tightest. The last filed revenue and wage bill, the parachute if there is one, and this tracker’s projection for the season. There is no league position or points column here on purpose: this is a finance tracker, and a table that needed rewriting every Saturday would be wrong more often than it was right. 19 of the 24 project above the 85% line. Southampton carry a four-point deduction for the whole of 2026/27, the only one in the division, and it is not a financial sanction — see their Sanctions tab. Revenue and wage columns are from different financial years for different clubs, because Championship clubs file at different times and three of these were in other divisions last season — the per-club Accounts tab says which year each figure is.
| Club | Rev | Wages | W/R | Parachute | Est. SCR |
|---|
| Portsmouth | £24.6m | £17.4m | 71% | — | 79.3% |
| Bolton Wanderers | £20.5m | £17.1m | 83% | — | 80.0% |
| West Ham United | £228m | £175.9m | 77% | yr 1 · ~£55m | 80.5% |
| Lincoln City | £8.2m | £8m | 98% | — | 81.0% |
| Southampton | £158m | £116m | 73% | yr 2 · ~£40m | 82.9% |
| Wolverhampton Wanderers | £172m | £163m | 95% | yr 1 · ~£55m | 88.1% |
| Bristol City | £40.3m | £35.9m | 89% | — | 90.0% |
| Watford | £26m | £28.1m | 108% | — | 94.4% |
| Burnley | £71.7m | £82.3m | 115% | yr 1 · ~£55m | 99.0% |
| Queens Park Rangers | £28m | £27.4m | 98% | — | 100.0% |
| Charlton Athletic | £11.2m | £15.7m | 140% | — | 100.0% |
| Millwall | £23.9m | £28.6m | 120% | — | 100.0% |
| Blackburn Rovers | £23.7m | £28m | 118% | — | 103.0% |
| Norwich City | £39.3m | £48.1m | 122% | — | 103.8% |
| Stoke City | £35.4m | £31m | 88% | — | 104.9% |
| Derby County | £31.9m | £33.7m | 106% | — | 105.1% |
| Sheffield United | £79.3m | £50m | 63% | — | 110.0% |
| Swansea City | £22.3m | £29m | 130% | — | 116.1% |
| Cardiff City | £25.8m | £39m | 151% | — | 116.1% |
| Birmingham City | £35.6m | £38.9m | 109% | — | 117.8% |
| Wrexham | £33.3m | £19.9m | 60% | — | 119.0% |
| Preston North End | £20.5m | £26.4m | 129% | — | 126.9% |
| West Bromwich Albion | £27.8m | £37.1m | 133% | — | 127.8% |
| Middlesbrough | £32.5m | £36.4m | 112% | — | 130.2% |
The table sorts by any column. Sort by wages and the order barely changes, because in this division wages and income move together and neither reliably buys promotion. That is the Championship’s whole folklore and also its whole financial problem: clubs spend anyway.
A warning about comparing these columns. Wages-to-revenue here mixes Premier League years, Championship years and League One years, because that is what the clubs have filed. A relegated club’s ratio looks flattering on Premier League income it no longer has; a promoted club’s looks alarming on League One income it has already outgrown. The estimated SCR column is the one built on a common basis for 2026/27, and it is an estimate.
Changelog
16 Sept 2026
Wolverhampton Wanderers joins The Bean Counter, with the Championship
Built as part of the site’s expansion to the Championship for 2026/27, the first season of the EFL’s Squad Cost Rules.
What is solid. The squad (28 players, as listed on 12 September 2026) and the summer’s completed transfer business come from published squad and season records; 26 of the 28 players carry a date of birth, which is what drives the under-21 exemptions. The last filed accounts are as filed, and the Accounts tab names the financial year. These pages carry no league position or points: a finance tracker that needed rewriting every Saturday would be wrong more often than right.
What is estimated, and flagged. Everything for 2026/27: income, wages, amortisation, agent fees and therefore the ratio itself. 3 of this window’s 20 completed deals carried no published fee, and they are counted at zero rather than guessed.
The largest known gap. The homegrown count on the Squad List tab is a nationality proxy, not a training record. The Premier League pages on this site carry a real training history per player; reproducing that for 24 Championship squads is the biggest outstanding job on these pages and is not yet done. Until it is, that number is a shape rather than a count and says so wherever it appears.
One definition is not public. The EFL has published the headline of the Squad Cost Rules but not the full calculation. This page models it on the Premier League’s shape so the figure is comparable across the site. If the published definition turns out to be the cash-based reading some analysts expect, this model changes and this changelog will record it.
Glossary
The words this division uses, and what they actually mean.
Squad Cost Rules (SCR)
The Championship’s spending rule from 2026/27. Squad cost may not exceed 85% of income, with up to £33m of owner equity over three years, capped at £15m in a season. It replaced Profitability and Sustainability.
Equity top-up
The owner’s capped contribution to the allowance: £15m in one season, £33m across three. It is cash, it is finite, and it exists in no other English division’s cost rule. The Premier League has no equivalent.
Adjusted revenue base
The EFL’s term for the denominator. The full definition is not public. It is designed so a one-off windfall cannot buy a season of spending.
Real-time monitoring
The EFL checking the ratio during the season rather than after it. The practical consequence is that an embargo can land in the window that caused it.
Parachute payment
55% of a Premier League equal share in the first year after relegation, 45% in the second, 20% in the third. It is income, so it raises the 85% allowance.
EFL solidarity payment
What a Championship club without a parachute receives instead: a fraction of the same pot, distributed evenly.
Homegrown
Three seasons, or 36 months, at a club affiliated to the FA or the FAW before the season in which the player turns 21. A registration test, not a nationality test.
Undisclosed
What most Championship transfer fees are. On this site an undisclosed fee is counted at zero rather than estimated, which makes every spending total on these pages a floor.
Amortisation
A transfer fee spread across the length of the contract, capped at five years. It is a cost every year of the deal, which is why a relegated club’s fees keep costing after the income that justified them has gone.
Transfer embargo
The EFL’s first sanction: no registrations, or only conditional ones, until the club is back inside the rule.
