And The Sun says missing the top four and Champions League qualification could see £70m cut from the club's transfer budget for the summer market.
Professor Rob Wilson, an academic lead at University Campus of Football Business, said: "Their reported profits are suggesting financial health, but the underlying losses basically indicate a reliance on accounting strategies.
"You can't trade on accounting strategies forever.
"What you're doing is essentially just putting off the inevitable, which is at some point you're going to post a pretty significant loss or you're going to have to have a big asset sale.
"They are kind of protecting that with the longevity of the player contracts that they've been including.
"They are properly on a knife edge in my view.
"They are backing themselves or have already backed themselves into a pretty unmanageable corner."
