Jeff Shi on Wolves accounts loss: "It's normal"

The figures – which cover Fosun's first season in charge of running the club in 2016/17 – revealed Wolves' debt has increased to £23.8m, the wage bill has risen almost £9m to £24.8m and player spending will reach £67m this summer with the purchase of Diogo Jota.

However Shi is unconcerned by the figures – and called for Championship TV cash to increase to make it a level playing field across Europe.

"The loss is the nature of the league," he told the Express & Star. "Other clubs if they had real ambition they would lose money too.

"We have less TV rights revenue but the quality of the league is higher and higher.

"The quality is even higher than the Portuguese league, so the quality is higher and if you want to get promoted you need high quality players, so you have to pay.

"But in the meantime the TV right revenue is not only far behind the Premier League, it's far behind the French league and the Italian league. But we're recruiting players from those leagues.

"So on transfer business we're on an equal level, especially with the French league. But the revenue we get is far behind them.

"That's the problem with the league, so we have to take the loss.

"I don't know whether people at the league thing about this but I think the (loss) is normal.

"Otherwise the league can go back to 10 years ago when one team can win 106 points, because that league is weaker than it is now.

"But the players were not as good. The Championship is at a crucial turning point because there is no money coming in but we have to pay a lot of money out.

"With all the factors in the league you can see a £20m loss is normal if you have ambition, especially for a club without parachute payments."