When managing director Angus Kinnear found out that Birmingham City had not only received a fine for breaching the Profit and Sustainability rules but had also been docked nine points, he realised that Championship clubs would have to evolve.
The West Midlands club receiving a sporting sanction for this Financial Fair Play breach was a wake up call for Kinnear and called for a complete change in strategy approaching the summer transfer window.
Speaking to the Talking Shutt podcast, he said: "The world changed with the decision on Birmingham. The reality is that in previous years most successful clubs have been over the P&S limit or right at the verge of it.
"We had to really shift the strategy and what it meant was you can't have players on the balance sheet at the club who aren't contributing to the first team. So the strategy needs to be that every penny you're investing needs to be performing on the pitch."
Kinnear explained how that was a shift from the previous strategy which had seen them invest in players like Jay-Roy Grot and Pawel Cibicki "to develop them out on loan either to sell or to trade successfully or to bring them into the first team - that doesn't really work anymore".
"The squad has to be smaller and everybody who's in the squad needs to be contributing," he said. "It was a busy summer exiting players but I think it was right for the players involved because under the new structure they're not going to have a future playing for the club and there's some very talented players.
"It means we have incoming transfer funds that we can count against for profit and sustainability and we also get equivalent reductions in the wage bill. They key thing, and this was the big discussion with Marcelo is, could we do that without weakening the strength of the squad and I think we've come pretty close to doing that.
"We sold almost £26 million of players and I think we've emerged with a stronger squad than we had before. I understand there were some doubts as the window unfolded but I think if people look at who's gone out and then how the loan transfers have worked for us, we're in a pretty good space."
Key to the new strategy is making the most of the loan market. Kinnear said: "The loan window was something that we all identified last season that hadn't worked for us well enough. If you look at the teams which performed well last season, Tammy Abraham was absolutely key - and Mings - for Aston Villa and look at Derby with Mount and Tomori and Wilson, absolutely key. If you look at our loans, they didn't work in quite the same way.
"We think this year with Helder, Eddie and Ben we're in a good place."
Listen to the Talking Shutt podcast in full here.
