Championship clubs have reportedly held three meetings over the last month to try to trash out how Financial Fair Play should be shaped as soon as this summer - with the idea of 'a luxury tax' that could turn Stoke City's possibilities on its head.

In brief, the Championship has up to now been following the same profit and sustainability rules as the Premier League, albeit with a £41.5 million rolling three-year cap on losses rather than £105m in the top flight.

The Premier League is now moving towards a Squad Cost Rules approach, introduced for Uefa competitions in 2022, that instead ties how much each club can spend on player wages and transfer fees to a percentage of their revenue. Uefa will eventually set that at 70 per cent while the Premier League are going for 85 per cent.

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Clubs in the lower leagues already use a cap; set at 60 per cent in League One and 50 per cent in League Two - but until now, and unlike in the Championship or Premier League, investment with guarantees from owners has counted towards revenue, which is in part why Birmingham City were able to spend so much last summer.

But League One and League Two clubs have voted to tighten those rules by staggering the the amount of cash that owners can pump in - and now Championship clubs are having their say on what should happen at their level.

It is claimed that Stoke and rivals will not just follow the Premier League's lead and introduce a Squad Cost Rules limit of 85 per cent but will "stick with profit and sustainability while running SCR in the background to see how it works", writes finance expert Matt Slater in The Athletic.

But there is a catch because of the chasm within the Championship - where recently relegated clubs from the top flight could have a £40m injection due to parachute payments - and the gulf from there to the Premier League, where clubs have a guaranteed income of at least £100m.

So research has apparently been commissioned about going forward with SCR plus luxury tax idea, "which would allow the laissez-faire brigade to spend more than 85 per cent providing they match their over-spending by putting the same amount in a central pot that would be shared with the other teams."

Slater warns, however: "While some like the logic of this idea, it seems unlikely that Premier League chiefs — or the regulator, for that matter — will be in favour of sharing more cash with guys who can pay a 100 per cent luxury tax to lose more money."

Stoke have been caught in a vicious circle regarding FFP since being relegated from the Premier League in 2018. The club was left chasing its tail after early transfer mistakes, trying to rebuild a better squad while using less money than they had originally spent.

Kieran Maguire said last week: “Once you’ve had losses for a couple of years then you are always on the back foot. Your first aim is to cut your costs and the wage bill is less than a third of the numbers we saw in the Premier League. There has been significant cost cutting.

“If you take a look at the value of the squad, when Stoke City went down it cost something in the region of £196m while in the most recent season it was down to far less than £20m. There has been a significant sea change in terms of the culture of the club but those losses are still spectacular.

“The wages aren’t particularly high by Championship standards, they’re about average, but even so you would expect over the course of a few years you would expect maybe one below average season, average in another and perhaps above average in another."

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