TOWN are already negotiating player contracts which will help them meet new salary-cap regulations.

Chief executive Nigel Clibbens revealed the club are fully behind Football League directives to restrict spending.

Town and their League I rivals will work to a trial target this season without penalty, but in 2012-13 a fixed percentage of turnover will be introduced with sanctions for clubs who break the barrier.

At the Galpharm, turnover is between £5m and £6m each year and on setting a salary cap, Clibbens explained: “We have been strong advocates of this for a long time.

“Our own business model – where the owner can only subsidise the club – is the one the League are trying to address, and we believe the cap on spending will be a good thing for us and a good thing for the game in the long run.

“In the coming season, for us to go immediately from our current financial structure to a new one based on percentage is not going to happen, so there is a year for people to try and adjust.

“The key for us is that we had already started to look at this in the last January transfer window and started making steps on the right path.

“We have continued those in the current transfer window (Calum Woods and Oscar Gobern have been added to the squad along with Donal McDermott), and because we will have around eight professionals out of contract at the end of the coming season, we are capable of controlling our own destiny rather than being faced with any sort of problem.”

Clibbens – who says plans for the Canalside training complex are progressing as quickly as can be expected – believes the salary cap will help many clubs survive.

“We feel that by trying to do things in the right way and having a relatively good turnover compared with our rivals will stand us in good stead,” he said.

“Our turnover as a club is growing all the time and is a key part of our planning, so any fans who might feel we’ll be disadvantaged by this should realise that in the long run we will be better off and, in the short term, there is nothing to fear.

“Everything here is under control because we have been planning for a long time, and the strength of the club and the foundations we’ve put in place mean we can deal with the change.

“That’s why we have supported this. It’s good for us and good for the game because it will stop clubs over-exerting themselves and risking all when they can’t afford it.”

Town are keen to cut their wage bill anyway and are determined not to breach the new ceiling on pay.

“Collective action is essential,” said Clibbens. “There will always be people looking to exploit situations and bend the rules to their own advantage, but there’s a real groundswell of opinion that that won’t do anybody any good and we all have to act together. On the players we bring in, we are negotiating new contracts knowing how much we expect to be able to spend not this season, but next season and the season after that.

“So it’s no longer necessarily about how much money Dean Hoyle is prepared to overspend by, it’s about how much can we afford from our own resources and how much can we spend next year.”