2009/10 to 2017/18

Millwall never reached the Premier League in the nine seasons from 2009/10 to 2017/18, spending six in the Championship and three lower down. Their best finish was 8th in the Championship, in 2017/18. They didn’t win a major trophy. Over those nine summers they paid £1.7m in transfer fees and took in £0, a net spend of £1.7m.

Millwall's decade came in two halves. Promoted from League One in 2010, they finished a creditable ninth in their first Championship season, then slid down the table year after year: 16th, 20th, 19th and finally 22nd and relegation in 2014/15. Two seasons later they were back, and eighth in 2017/18 was their best finish of the whole period.

The Den has never been a place for big transfer fees, and these years were no exception. Scott Malone, from Bournemouth for around £800,000, was the biggest outlay. Steve Morison left for Norwich in 2011 and spent the next season in the Premier League.

Give Millwall £900m and the 115.football fun starts. A club that went from League One to eighth in the Championship on very little should be frightening with a real budget. Their only top-flight spell came at the end of the 1980s. A second is well within reach.