2009/10 to 2017/18

Burton Albion never reached the Premier League in the nine seasons from 2009/10 to 2017/18, spending two in the Championship and seven lower down. Their best finish was 20th in the Championship, in 2016/17. They didn’t win a major trophy. Over those nine summers they paid £1.2m in transfer fees and took in £1.9m, a net profit of £701k.

Burton Albion only joined the Football League in 2009, so their two seasons in the Championship are one of the decade's great small-town stories. They survived 2016/17 in 20th place, then went down in 23rd a year later, level on 41 points with Barnsley and two short of safety.

This was a club operating on almost nothing. Jackson Irvine arrived from Ross County for around £300,000 and left for Hull a year later for about £1.9m, which tells you most of what you need to know about the business model. Plenty of the rest came on free transfers.

Burton spend the first seven seasons of this period below the Championship. Hand them £900m on 115.football and the question is no longer survival but ambition. Could the Pirelli Stadium host Premier League football? With hindsight and a very large budget, it is a fair question.