PHIL Gartside has outlined some of the difficulties faced by Wanderers as the new Financial Fair Play rules come into place this season.

The Wanderers chairman said last week that the club’s finances were starting to be brought into line after relegation from the top flight – but that has not prevented a massive £30million in lost income during the first 12 months in the Championship.

The incoming FFP rules have been designed to stop clubs spending beyond their means but Gartside believes they are particularly prohibitive for clubs such as Wanderers, who had existed as a Premier League club for more than a decade.

“I think people will start to realise the new (UEFA) Financial Fair Play rules that have been brought in by The Football League are very difficult to manage if you’re a team that has been in the Premier League for quite some time,” he told TalkSport.

“The transition from Premier League to the Championship is hard enough anyway, with the financial pressures it brings.

"In the first year we were down over £30million in income and you can’t swing your costs in the same way, and that brings its own pressures.

"The second year of our Premier League (parachute) payment is ironically a bit more than last year because of the change in the new deal that came out, but it doesn’t make life any easier.

"You’ve not got the same ability to invest in the same way that you could previously because of the Financial Fair Play rules.

“In some respects, it’s forcing clubs to the lowest common denominator rather than higher standards and that’s a concern, really.”

Gartside always maintained Wanderers had guarded against the possibility of relegation, and he believes that all but the established big guns have a back-up plan.

But the chairman is worried by a financial gap that has grown even bigger with the new TV deals signed this summer.

“Half the Premier League have got to have one eye on the fact they may get relegated,” he said.

“It’s not an easy thing being in the lower half of the Premier League. Looking at the gap now between the Premier League and the Championship in financial terms – that gap has got bigger.

“I wrote a paper to the Premier League – to (chief executive) Richard Scudamore – about five years ago saying it was going to get worse and it’s never been so true, it’s got a lot worse.”

Gartside reckons Dougie Freedman has been able to bring in the right mix of experience and youth this summer – and hopes in the signing of Jermaine Beckford from Leicester City, that his manager has found a man to add the goals he feels were missing last term.

The Wanderers boss has also made extensive changes to his backroom staff and added four players to his senior ranks – including free transfers Marc Tierney and Alex Baptiste, and Rob Hall and Beckford, who were recruited for minimal fees up front.

The Whites boss is keen to bring more options on board but might now have to scour the loan market, or explore the possibility of swapping some of his players in an effort to get a squad more to his taste.

Financial fair play or not, he continues to have the full backing of Gartside, who agrees the gruelling demands of the Championship require a bigger squad.

“In reality, to keep players fit for 46 games, your training regimes and schedules have got to be different than they are in the Premier League.

“You don’t have the same amount of break time. This year we’re starting two weeks before the Premier League and then you’ve got the first round of the Capital One Cup.

“It is a difficult adjustment, as it showed with Blackburn and ourselves not getting promoted.”