Ridsdale told a BBC documentary, The Money Game: "Mistakes were made but I don't regret the ambition we had and the pursuit of that ambition.
"I don't think there's a single thing I could change. We were probably over ambitious, we went that transfer too far. That in itself causes problems.
"Did we make mistakes? Yes, of course we did. Did we invest too much? Time would suggest that we invested too much as well.
"The squad became too big, partly because of a lot of injuries, and then it's difficult to persuade a manager he needs to reduce the squad.
"The model was built on aspirations to be in Europe and at the higher end of the Premier League so you got a high number of television appearances, that's where the money came from."