Struggling Barcelona handed £28m cut in their wage cap by LaLiga

Barcelona's LaLiga-imposed salary cap has taken another enormous cut after the latest figures were published by the Spanish top flight on Tuesday.

The Catalan giants were hit with a sizeable deduction back in November when it dropped by around £250million in the wake of the financial pressures caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

LaLiga president Javier Tebas explained back then that salary cuts were necessary to bring down the 'excessive spending' of Spanish clubs, given supporters are still unable to attend matches.

But LaLiga have now ordered Barcelona to reduce their spending on wages even further, bringing their budget down from €380m (£328m) to €347m (£300m), a reduction of nine per cent.

The Catalan giants are in a dire financial position with debt exceeding €1bn (£864m) and player wages took up around 61 per cent of the club's £940m income before the coronavirus pandemic took hold.

With no sign of fans returning to arenas in Spain any time soon, income sources have completely dried up and now they have been ordered by LaLiga to reduce the wage bill even further.

Captain Lionel Messi is the current highest earner at the club and he pockets around £500,000 per week (£26m per year) while Antoine Griezmann takes in around £249,000-a-week (£15.3m).

Barcelona players agreed to a 70 per cent wage cut back in March 2020 and something similar might be needed again.

It is another major blow for Barcelona and the club's new president, who is due to be elected this month.

It comes just one day after the club's offices at the Nou Camp were raided by local police and former president Josep Maria Bartomeu was arrested for his alleged involvement in the 'Barcagate' smear campaign scandal.

Bartomeu is one of four people to have been arrested so far, with Barcelona's CEO Oscar Grau and head of legal services Roman Gomez Ponti two of those. Jaume Masferrer, who acted as an adviser to Bartomeu, is the other.

It is not all doom and gloom for sides in LaLiga though with Barcelona's huge rivals Real Madrid allowed to grow their wage capacity.

Zinedine Zidane's budget has risen one per cent from €468m (£404m) to €473 (£409m). That is a welcome boost to Real as they try to attract either Kylian Mbappe or Erling Haaland to the Bernabeu this summer.

They are also desperate to move on Gareth Bale and get his £13million-a-year salary off of the books.

Real Madrid are one of only four LaLiga clubs whose salary cap grew after the January transfer window, along with Granada, Celta Vigo and Huesca.

Atletico Madrid, currently top of LaLiga, joined Barcelona in being asked to reduced their wage bill.

Diego Simeone's side's allowance has dropped from €252m (£217m) to €217m (£187m), a deduction of 14 per cent.

Sevilla (1 per cent), Valencia (9 per cent), Villarreal (3 per cent) and Athletic Bilbao (7 per cent) were the other big-name clubs to be ordered to reduce their spending.

In total, LaLiga's salary cap has dropped from €2.3bn (£) to €2.2bn (£) as Tebas praised the efforts of LaLiga's clubs to become more financially prudent during the pandemic.

He said: 'The work that the clubs and LaLiga have done has yielded results in the face of an unexpected crisis like the one that has arrived.'