Leicester, QPR and 7 Championship Clubs Facing Financial Fair Play Sanctions for Over-Spending

​Several clubs are set to be hit with massive fines for over-spending in the Championship, including the Premier League's Leicester City and QPR. 

The newly-promoted duo could be hit with fines of up to £30 million for racking up huge losses in the 2013-14 season. Leeds United are also set to be sanctioned after posting losses of £22.9m for last season. 

Blackburn, Nottingham Forest, Bolton, Bournemouth, Birmingham and Middlesbrough as well as Leeds can expect bans of transfer activity in the January window and in some cases beyond if they do not address their financial issues.

Under the League’s FFP rules, clubs who overspend and succeed by doing so by reaching the lucrative Premier League are hit with fines - hence QPR and Leicester being hit in the pocket. Leeds’ punishment could be the last of their worries because their 2013-14 accounts, which have not yet been made public, paint an alarming picture of fiscal chaos and uncertainty.

According to a report in the​ Mail on Sunday, Leeds United's income fell to £25.3m from £28.6m the previous season due to a loss of commercial revenue, income and merchandising. 

The accounts contain some alarming numbers, notably that minority shareholders Gulf Finance House, who have a 25 per cent stake, are owed £20.9m by Leeds, and that majority owner Massimo Cellino - currently challenging a League ruling he is unfit to run the club - is owed £12.2m he has injected in 2014 either personally or via companies in London and Italy.

QPR, on the other hand, are set to be punished for mass spending under the reign of chairman Tony Fernandes. In the past five seasons, QPR have spent £135,747,500 and have a wage bill higher than some of Europe's top clubs, including last season's Champions League finalists Atletico Madrid. 

Rangers' financial accounts for 2012-13 confirm the impression at Loftus Road that the club overspent for manager Mark Hughes and his replacement Harry Redknapp, in a vain effort to avoid relegation,producing a wage bill of £78m, 128% of the club's entire turnover. That culture of spending on wages, becoming steadily less prevalent at clubs across Europe, has been put into stark perspective by this season's remarkable achievement of Atlético, whose squad have reached the Champions League final on a wage bill significantly less than QPR's. 

QPR, taken over in August 2011 by the Malaysian airline entrepreneur Tony Fernandes and his partners Kamarudin Meranun and Ruben Gnanalinigam, having sacked Neil Warnock in January 2012, signed ten players for Warnock's replacement, Mark Hughes, that summer. After they sacked Hughes in November 2012, Fernandes sanctioned £20.5m spending in January last year and a further swelling of the wage bill on Christopher Samba and Loic Remy, Redknapp also signing Jermaine Jenas, Yun Suk-Young and Tal Ben-Haim.

Such drastic spending, in a Premier League whose clubs more generally have reined in some excesses of the past, produced a £65m loss at QPR, the deepest of all 20 clubs, but did not succeed in staving off relegation in 2013.

If QPR refuse to pay and are then relegated, the Football League have already said they will not be re-admitted to their three divisions and would face having to pay up or banishment to the non-league.