Simply put, we overspent in the EPL. 20 million for a player, say, is not a flat 20 million outlay. You have wages (5-10 million over a 4 or 5 year contract), signing on fee for the player and agent fee (2-5 million).
The ground needed investment as did the training pitches, so that's a lot more than you'd think. Upscaling the club at home and abroad costs a fair whack as well.
We overspent on players due to the demands of the manager, a manager who would have kept going if he had his way and bankrupted us (what a Blade). At the same time we failed to invest in the infrastructure.
The recruitment was so bad that we don't have the saleable asserts other teams have. We also had a number of players on high wages not actively contributing but still on the wage bill.
The owner has little of his own free money so we took out loans against the TV money. Those loans have interest. Due to COVID we took an unexpected hit on both TV money and gates. Other clubs have rich owners or investors who can meet shortfalls. We don't.
We'll be paying off the EPL wages until all those players have left. I doubt we'll have much in the way of a transfer kitty until then and that will be back to pre promotion days, but less. Worth remembering that the only reason we spent so much, for us, in the Championship was because we had two chairmen who were vying for power.
The combination of signing Brewster for so much over his value and getting relegated fucked us.we are overspent and trying to claw it back. We must has dropped well north of 20 million with the loans last season and the Slav pay-offs as well in a desperate attempt to go straight back up.