Is the Championship viable for Chesterfield?

Upon taking the reins as Chesterfield FC chairman recently the club’s majority shareholder Dave Allen reiterated his desire to see the club become a Championship outfit and give ‘100%’ of his effort to make second-tier football a reality in North-East Derbyshire.

That ambition took a blip last season when the Spireites were relegated from League One but the general progression of the club in the past few years has undeniably been an upwards one with the new b2net Stadium providing the catalyst.

Attendances, which doubled in the first season at the new ground, held up well last season despite poor performances on the pitch while off-field commercial activity is light years away from what was possible at Saltergate.

But is Championship football (for more than one or two seasons at a time) a realistic proposition when the football landscape moves on financially in the way that it has done over the past week or so?

The Premier League announced a 70% rise in its television income from 2013/14 onwards after a £3bn deal with Sky and BT for the domestic rights was completed (the overseas rights are yet to be announced and will no doubt be measured in huge numbers as well).

‘parachute’

With increased riches on offer at the top and increased parachute payments for those who fall out of the Premier League it looks as though an unofficial ‘Premier II’ is on its way as the money needed to compete in the increasingly frantic Championship becomes greater.

Doncaster Rovers for example provide some kind of template for the Spireites as their gradual progression from the depths of Conference despair was crowned with promotion to the second level. They remained in the division for four seasons on average crowds of around 10,000 but found it ever more difficult to compete, so much so that last season chairman John Ryan experimented with a policy of handing responsibility for transfers to an agent.

The Spireites are right to aim high and will certainly not spend money they haven`t got to pursue a dream but the footballing landscape makes it ever harder for smaller clubs to aspire to breaking into the second tier let alone the Premier League.