PLYMOUTH Argyle made a £1m-plus profit last year, despite funding the highest wage-bill in the club's history.

Accounts released this morning for the year ending May 31, 2008, show that the Pilgrims turned round a loss of more than £700,000 in the previous 12 months to a £1.1m profit.

The Pilgrims ended the 2007-08 Coca-Cola Championship in tenth place, the seventh successive time they had bettered their previous season's finishing position.

That achievement came even though they lost key players like Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and David Norris during the year.

Chairman Paul Stapleton said: "The fact that we ended up in tenth place was a fine result, bearing in mind all the upheaval during the year, which included a change of manager in November and the fact that certain players left, by triggering a certain clause in their contract, or because they wanted to move nearer where their families lived, or to improve their wages."

The Pilgrims made £3.8m profit on the transfer-market last year, which enabled them to finance their highest-ever wage costs despite their gate-income being the fourth-lowest in the 24-team Championship.

"We did that because we needed to compete in this league," said Mr Stapleton. "Our gates are not the highest - we understand that - but we have got to do what we can, and to improve again last year was a major achievement.

"We have seen, this year, how difficult it is to do that year-on-year. I think everybody at the club needs praise for that happening.

"It was an unusual year for us in some respects in that we had a significant amount of transfer fees received - and then paid transfer monies out - and we deliberately paid extra wage-costs out from January onwards to try to maintain our challenge for the play-offs.

"It is a sign of the times in our division that transfer fees help to bail out the trading concern for the clubs. It's even more important now, with our current gates, and credit crisis. You have to balance the books somehow, and that's what we try to do.

"I know Burnley and Preston have talked about this for years. Preston were only telling me recently that they had to sell David Nugent to cover two years' losses. They were philosophical about it. They had to do it. Their gates weren't high enough."

Mr Stapleton believes that the Championship is becoming more and more competitive each season, with many of Argyle's rivals enjoying a huge financial advantage.

"It has got tougher this year," he said. "The teams that have come into the Championship this season have got more money than the teams that went out. To have six clubs with parachute payments in the league this year is amazing. We haven't had that for years.

"You expect one, maybe two, to go back up each year - to have six with parachute payments of £12m, when our turnover is only £8m, puts things in perspective.

"We try to do our best, but, until we get full-houses every week, we have difficulty doing that. We have got to bite and scratch, to borrow a favourite phrase from the manager. Sometimes we have periods of difficulty and we have to work altogether to get through those periods.

"We've never got to the Premier League. We're trying to do it the right way, and it's getting harder.

"Deloitte Touche's report last year said that we were one of the best-run clubs, financially, but it is not easy and it is not going to get easier."