wage bill

Did anyone see the BBC article about Arsenals accounts?Their wage bill is 140 million aprox.which is 60% of their turnover.They are amongst the best run clubs in the premier league and the most financialy secure.Our wage bill is 30-35 million no wonder its very difficult to compete.

 

Just proof that top level football players in general, and especially those in the "marquee" leagues like the EPL, La Liga et al, are massively, grotesquely over-paid.

 

Yea people like Almunia were on 60 grand a week....and most of the other deadwood like Squillaci and co were on at least 50.....Arsenal and Spurs moan they can't afford to pay players 120 grand a week but they have 3 * players who hardly play on 40 grand a week.

 

I cannot see how clubs can justify paying players so high wages, no matter how good they are.

Football as a business sector is characterised by boom and bust cycles as clubs try and out-pace one another. Nowhere is this more damaging than in transfer prices and wage bills. It is economic stupidity and irresponsible to the extreme. Not to mention that it ultimately ends up fleecing the fans.

 

out of curiosity does anyone have a rough estimate how much a youth player in a team like arsenal would get a week?

 

I think its wrong that they are paid that much.

But at the end of the day if you want to compete you have to do it to keep up with the other teams doing the same.

Sadly in football now, money always talks.

 

It's precisely that resigned attitude that permits wage bills to spiral out of control. If enough clubs say no to wage increases and tell greedy players to * off and find themselves new clubs if they want astronomical wages, the whole market will calm down.

 

I agree. But when you have clubs like Man City who have more money than sense, if it means getting good players in on high wages that wins them the league then they will do it, and they have done it.

You then have other teams that might want to adopt the right attitude on wages but when fans are screaming for success how can they compete with the likes of City if they dont do the same?

Its up to the governing bodies to introduce some kind of wage cap.

 

I agree it's a tough one and I don't have the solution. But astronomical wages and the resigned attitude that supports them are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Look how many clubs are spending beyond their means and getting nowhere.

It's an intrinsic problem with modern football.

 

It really is.

I think someone mentioned before that the NBA have a wage cap. I think its somthing that needs to come into football. I think it would also make the game more competitive.

 

I wouldn't have any problem with a wage cap. Of course all UEFA leagues would have to implement it simultaneously to avoid giving one league a competitive advantage, and that's highly unlikely.

The A-League in Australia has it but they allow (or allowed last time I checked) two exceptions for "marquee players", usually major stars from Europe like del Piero.

 

http://www.arsenalinsider.com/4494/revealed-arsenal-stars-staggering-paypackets/#axzz27xTUcggu

 

look at our wage bill compared to other SPL teams.

 

According to that Arsene Wenger is on over £7 million a year.

And Liam Brady gets over £1 million for helping with the reserves.

Sheer lunacy, it really is.

 

A wage cap is probably what needs to be installed since counting on common sense of football clubs that have money throwing billionaires behind them is not going anywhere near responsibly finances.

The NHL surely installed a wage cup a couple of years before but they still have a massive strike going on at the moment. Any correlation there? I'm not quite informed.

 

The way I see it, we simply can't compete with the EPL, until the bubble bursts down there... and that is getting close. But forgetting about the EPL and focusing solely on the situation here in Scotland, there is an answer, and although it would safeguard the game in this country, I suspect it might not be the most popular one amongst Celtic supporters.

1. Introduce a salary cap

This immediately puts all teams on the same financial basis. The trick is, under EU legislation this is difficult to implement beyond it being a 'gentleman's agreement'. That said there is still a way around this. If there were a base of consensus formed by all the clubs, then any team that exceeds the budget may do so, so long as they pay a 'luxury tax' to the league, which can be redistributed to the rest of the league.

2. Introduce aa draft system

Having a great youth system is one thing, but say a draft were introduced and all players that turn 19 in the coming season were entered into a 'players draft'.

Again, this is is feasible, but can't really be modeled exactly on the ones used in the US or even in the AFL in Australia. However, it would certainly help strengthen competition. Obviously, if a player were particularly highly valued by the club that he was a youth player at, then that club can secure his services by ensuring he has made 'x' number of first team appearances by his 19th birthday.

The newly promoted side would get first pick of the available players, the team that finishes second bottom gets the 2nd pick, 3rd bottom gets 3rd pick, and so on.

Implementing these:

These could well be implemented & I think this is potentially something that the other 11 clubs would be very keen to explore. With the way the SPL voting system is set, if they can change this from the current 11-1, then implementing this is a very realistic solution.

There are two real questions:

Can those who govern the game see the potential that this could have in a positive way, rather than trying to keep doing things the same way they always have, which has seen the steady decline in the game?

Secondly, would the MSM see beyond their own petty self interests in shaping opinion rather than trying to preserve the 'status quo' - even though this has been substantially destabilized by the demise of the Orcs?

 

No doubt money at the top levels in football is pretty mad, but people often forget about the above. We complain how disgusting the EPL is because we are priced out of competing. But that is exactly how SPL clubs feel when they have to compete against us. I dont remember Celtic and Rangers fans being too concerned when they dominated the league in the 90s and 00s by outspending everyone else in Scotland (granted only one of them were doing it legally!)

A lot of our fans like to suggest a wage cap assuming this lowers the spending power of the top teams and closes the gap between us and the very best. But what if the SPL brought in a wage cap based on the sentiment of fair play, so we no longer could bring in the players we wanted. That would no doubt make the SPL more competitive and "fairer". It would lead to more even games, and a rebalancing of income in our game. And it would give several teams a real chance of challenging for the title each year. But Im guessing not many of our fans would be keen on that!

EDIT:
I see Taz has posted something similar just before I posted the above.

I guess the issue Taz is that in making the SPL fairer, it makes our objective of competing in Europe all the more impossible. You would effectively need all European leagues to agree to this otherwise it couldnt work. You would still have variations in caps but at least things would be regulated across the board. But you couldnt have a wage cap in say Scotland, England, Spain, Germany and Italy for example by not eastern Europe, because they their clubs simple buy out everyone else. It is trying to join up the laws that is the difficult part for me.

 

Pretty much same as the point I was making in my post.

Alot of our fans will only care about preserving our status to the detriment of all else, but I would argue 2 points. Firstly, it was this kind of mentality that saw Minty Moonbeams lose the plot in relation to how to responsibly manage his football club & secondly, what is the point of self interest if no one else is there to play?

 

Hence my point earlier in this thread:

Both Taz and Sween have made excellent points in this discussion.

The crux of the problem is that whilst it is in the interests of all European clubs (no matter what league or division, whether high status or low) to implement salary caps and the other changes we detailed, and to generally have a more level playing field economically, there are enough major clubs acting as vested interests to ensure that will never happen.

Are we a vested interest? Many other SPL clubs certainly look at us that way, but I wouldn't like to think that we are.

 

A financial restructure makes sense, but it needs such a massive shift in mentality that it will never happen. Most fans would simply argue that as long as we are managed in a sensible manner than why punish Celtic? The 45000 we get every week pay into a team and that money has to go somewhere. If we cap spending so we are in line with say Hearts or Dundee Utd, then we simply right off Europe altogether.

But then lower SPL clubs could make a fair point that we only grew to our current size by overspending and buying success. And a wage cap in the SPL would redress this and we would see a far more natural equilibrium of spending power in Scottish football.

A reshift might have merits but it will never ever happen in my opinion. Far too many people with interests in keeping it the way it is for anything to change.