Mike Cheston admits Rovers had faced a ‘difficult year’ after posting losses of £3.8m in their accounts, which ran to June 2017.

But the club’s finance director said owners Venky’s remained committed to supporting the club and said there would continue to be investment moving forward regardless of which division Tony Mowbray’s side are in.

The accounts, which saw net liabilities rise to almost £109m, were the first without parachute payments since relegation from the Premier League in 2012. As a result losses rose by £2.3m.

The latest figures were boosted by the departures of Shane Duffy and Grant Hanley in the summer of 2016 and Ben Marshall last January, with player sales equating to £11.9m. That was down on the 2016 figure of £16.9m when Jordan Rhodes, Rudy Gestede and Josh King all departed Ewood.

The main change came in media income, which halved to £6.7m due to the loss of parachute payments, while the wage to turnover ratio stood at 147 per cent.

Accountancy firms Deloitte and KPMG were brought in to Ewood Park during the summer, post relegation, to carry out an overview of all departments.

Cheston believes that work will prove invaluable moving forward, but said the owners have committed to funding the current infrastructure at the club despite dropping in to League One.

“There will be a heavy level of investment and they will continue to fund the club,” Cheston said.

“We are still in a situation where expenditure exceeds income levels and we are continuing to get their support.

“But we made the decision in the summer that for all the cost reductions we wanted to retain an infrastructure to try and get back in the Championship straight away.

“We could have put a pen through a whole load of numbers, but once you destroy the infrastructure that is there you can’t expect to switch it back on again months later.

“We decided it was a case that we have made a lot of savings but we tried to preserve the infrastructure to give ourselves the best chance of getting promoted at the first attempt.

“They (the owners) have provided the necessary investment to get the team to where they are now.

“One of the big things in the summer was not just about getting players in it but some of the players we had in the Championship we were very keen to retain.

“At the end of the season we will sit down with the owners again and look at all the player contracts and subject to what the owners decide to do we will take a view at that point.

“There’s every indication that the owners will continue to support the club in either scenario.”

On the 2017 accounts, Cheston said the club were still paying up contracts from previous years, but that that process was almost complete.

He added: “A part of it is the legacy from some of the long-term contracts which we very much resolved over the course of the course of the last few years.

“Some of the big earning contracts and long-term contracts have come to an end.

“Turnover has struggled for struggled for various reasons but we are committed to the salary structure.

“We have relatively fixed costs but had a massive drop in revenues so it was a difficult year.

“We have worked on reducing wages, each new contract has been renegotiated on much more appropriate terms.

“Even now we’re continuing to renew contracts to a much more reasonable level.”

Cheston said the loss of parachute payments resulted in a ‘significant drop in income’, with the club remaining reliant on the funding of owners Venky’s.

Loans owed to the Rao family rose from £87.2m to £94.8m in the last financial year.

Cheston added: “These accounts include a note that the owners are committed to 12 months from the signing of the accounts.

“Subsequently to that they have signed a number of commitments to the satisfaction of the English Football League regarding the commitments for the current season.

“All the indications and conversations are that irrespective of which league we are in they will continue to fund us for the foreseeable future.

“The funding they do is by way of loans but the owners have signed a commitment that they are not going to call that in in the foreseeable future.

“It is interest free, so that is the way it is reflected in the accounts but there is no demand or anything like that.”