Time to get back to reality

New Hull City chairman Adam Pearson will set about slashing spiralling costs at the club when he returns to the helm on Monday.

And despite the Tigers staring the possibility of relegation from the Premier League in the face – team strengthening will not be one of his priorities.

The Mail understands Mr Pearson has been staggered by the state of finances at the Tigers ahead of his return.

And, with the club he sold as a profitable business less than three years now having to raise around £18m to stay at, Mr Pearson will set about tackling a wage bill which is presently way beyond the club's means.

Sources say the Tigers – despite struggling at the wrong end of the division – have one of top 10 annual wage bills in the English game, at around £40m.

That has accumulated as City have recruited a squad of more than 40 players to tackle the Premier League.

However, while new faces have arrived, highly paid stars who rarely feature in the team have failed to be off-loaded.

It has left an alarming amount of money being bled from the club week after week.

And with that in mind, football finance expert Stephen Morrow says the time has come for the club to tighten the purse strings with immediate effect.

Head of the Department of Sports Studies at the University of Stirling, Mr Morrow said City, under previous chairman Paul Duffen, had taken a big gamble in loaning £22m and spending future Premier League payments early.

Now, he says, the time has come to stop "chasing the dream".

"There comes a point when a club has to stop following the dream and ensure it runs on a sustainable basis," he told the Mail after studying City's accounts.

"Looking ahead to January I think, given the concerns raised by the auditors earlier this month, it is unlikely that Hull will buy many new players."

However, while unlikely, it is not an impossibility.

Mr Pearson, 45, continues to seek investors to aid him in both preventing the club from spiralling into financial meltdown, and, possibly, recruiting the man to keep the Tigers in the top-flight come January.

Whether he secures such backing is yet to be seen, but Steve Nicholson, chief football writer for the Derby Telegraph, says that in Pearson alone, Hull have turned to the right man, as they did in back in March 2001.

The task in hand now at the Tigers has many similarities to that Mr Pearson faced in his first spell at the club and when taking on the role of chairman at Derby in October 2007.

Mr Pearson left Pride Park earlier this week with the club having fallen from grace in the Premier League, and struggling at the foot of the Championship.

But with major new investment having been secured through American backers and prudent financial procedures firmly in place, he slashed the squad size and wage bill, securing the club's long-term future.

"Adam Pearson has left a legacy at Derby whereby he's made the club financially viable again," Mr Nicholson told the Mail.

"As he did with Hull before, he's shown that he understands that football clubs must live within their means.

"He reduced the club's wage bill, he reduced the debt and that prudent approach has left Derby on a financially sound footing again."

When Mr Pearson returns to the directors box today at Burnley, Hull City will certainly be a very different club to that he joined eight years ago and the one he left behind in 2007.