Staggering financial numbers revealed involving Burnley, Leeds United and Leicester City | OneFootball

All the clubs from the 23/24 Championship season have revealed their accounts - there are some wild figures in there.

It's that time of year when football clubs begin to reveal their finances from the previous season, and boy has this latest round of accounts made some interesting revelations about the Championship.

Recent debates around why there is such a big gap in quality between England's second and first tiers have largely centered around the money available to clubs in each division.

For example, Sheffield United, who finished bottom of the Premier League last season, got paid just shy of £110 million by the league. Add on top of that the parachute payments that they receive and it dwarfs anything that any Championship side earns from the EFL's central income or the solidarity payments they receive from the Premier League.

It is a problem that many people feel needs to be resolved, especially since this campaign is shaping up to be the second in a row where all three promoted teams have gone straight back down.

But even in the second tier, where the operating costs to survive are much lower, there's a hell of a lot of money floating around, as has been revealed by the teams' accounts.

Astonishing Championship figures revealed involving Burnley, Leeds & Leicester

Football finance expert Kieran Maguire, off the back of all the accounts being released, has put together a table with all the key figures from each second tier side of the 2023/24 campaign, and some of the data there is just bananas.

Let's start with wages. The highest spenders on player wages in that season were the eventual champions, Leicester City, unsurprisingly. They paid out £107 million to their playing staff - the previous campaign's high was Norwich City with £56 million.

Now we get onto squad value, and this is where things really get cranked up. Leeds United, who had just come down from the Premier League, had a squad that was worth £281 million in the 23/24 campaign, based on the fees that they had paid for their players.

Burnley, who were one of the most dominant second tier sides in the competition's history, only had a squad worth £133 million for the 22/23 season. The one area where that Clarets side did surpass the teams they left behind in the second division for the following campaign was in expenditure. They were the highest spenders with £84 million in the season that they went up, £22 million more than the 23/24 biggest rollers: Leicester.

One of the most surprising stats to come from these accounts is actually who the lowest spenders are. West Bromwich Albion got into the play-offs last season and spent £0.1 million on transfers in order to do so. That really does show how good of a job Carlos Corberan did with the Baggies.

Football is a money game

There's no surprise that there's a strong correlation between spending and success at this level. There are a couple of outliers, like West Brom and Ipswich Town, but the rest of the teams that have done well in the Championship over the past couple of campaigns have had some of the highest squad values and the highest spending. And guess what, that trend will continue.

It's becoming harder and harder for clubs to break the mould of the top three or four, especially when there's the same rotation of teams going up to the top flight and then coming back down again.

It's a sad cruel reality of today's version of the sport, but, at the same time, when someone does defy the odds, it makes it even sweeter.