Middlesbrough boss Tony Mowbray has been given the task of halving the Championship club's wage bill this summer as the Teessiders again fail to regain their Premiership status. It is understood players' salaries currently account for around £20million a year, and that Boro are aiming to slash that to closer to £6million next season if they can.

The dramatic reduction is needed because the Teessiders based their financial model on winning a return to the top flight and the riches it brings within two years, and with parachute payments due to be drastically reduced, their turnover will decrease significantly.

Mowbray fully understands the implications of the situation and is heavily involved in plans to reshape the squad.

He said: "It's important to try to help manage the situation.

"Ultimately, my job is to put a squad together that can be competitive and win football matches, and you need to know what resources you have got to work with to do that.

"We need to cut down the bush, trim it back, before we can start growing it again, and that continues to be the process."

Boro this week moved high earner Kris Boyd out on loan to Nottingham Forest.

Conservative estimates place his basic weekly pay-packet before add-ons at £30,000 - or around £1.5million a year - and he is not alone, and it is youngsters such as Jason Steele, Joe Bennett and Cameron Park, who has already attracted interest from Premier LeagueLiverpool, around whom Mowbray wants to build his team.

He said: "Some of the younger players in our squad who have done exceptionally well are earning very modest salaries and yet performing at very high levels.

"They will probably be the ones that the bids come for. They are the dilemmas we are going to face.

"Cameron is a very, very talented boy, but without talking about individuals, the Bennetts, the Steeles, young players who we have given contracts to in the last few months, you would want to try to build your team with those talented young boys, not sell them.

"Salaries are not a problem. The problems are not those young boys, really, and yet there are not necessarily bids coming in for the players we would maybe like to move on, not to do with talent or how they perform, but because of salary levels.

"There don't seem to be any bids for the bigger earners."