Teams like Reading may need to lower their large wage bill
Another recession related blog this week, as the Football League is now discussing wage caps for footballers.
The proposal, which again has been mentioned for many years now, has sprung back into light following dwindling finances and amounting debt amongst clubs.
One of the main problems that I can establish, and one that will never diminish, is the fact that Football League clubs are frantically spending money in a bid to reach the next league. Moreover, they are trying to lessen the gap in quality between themselves and those above.
Following a spate of clubs going into administration this year, coupled with the latest tax scandal I talked about 2 weeks ago, there is growing pressure on the FA to bring smaller clubs back into the black.
Crystal Palace Manager, and personal hero, friend and father figure to myself, Neil Warnock, is adamant that the wage cap won’t come to light.
He’s seen several proposals such as this fall by the way side before, and said: “A wage cap will never happen – there will always be good players who will demand top money. And those players will always get that money one way or another.”
Meanwhile, Adam Pearson, the Derby County Chairman, has taken the opposite view. Pearson has seen the ugly side of financial trouble before, with accounts showing a £12.5million loss in 2007.
He warned: "The game is close to meltdown at all levels. Boards are under pressure to gain success and that leads to them paying ridiculous wages.
It cannot carry on or it will end in disaster. There is a growing feeling now that some sort of wage cap has to come in."
It is not completely clear how a wage cap would last, or who would support it. Since the 2003/04 season, a cap has operated in League Two, stating that clubs cannot spend more than 60% of their turnover on wages. However, this scheme only lasted one season in League One, as clubs began to refuse to comply over time.
The main problem for the Football League of course, is forcing clubs to employ the wage cap. A team who has just come in to a lot of money, such as QPR, or a newly relegated team with a high wage bill, would find it difficult to keep players happy and remain at the club.
As far as I can tell, imposing a wage cap upon the Football League, and not the Premier League, will help inflate the gap in quality between the two even more.
The original problem of wages spiraling out of control in the lower leagues stemmed from smaller teams desperately trying to improve their squads in the same way in which a top flight club would do.
A Championship club may receive around £1million in TV rights every year, along with perhaps £100-400k in sponsorship deals. It is estimated that getting promoted to the Premiership nets a club about £40-50million pounds for a year.
So why is it that the smaller clubs should cap wages and lose out on good players when the Premiership continues to run riot with irresponsible spending and rising debts?
Baffling. But that’s the way it goes for clubs and fans in the lower leagues. So we can hope for two things.
1. A sensible system that evens up the playing field from League Two, all of the way up to the Premiership.
Or…
2. That Crystal Palace finally establish themselves as top flight team before the wage cap is introduced!
2 comments:
I have been thinking of ways to make football more equal for the lower leagues and i have to say wage cap doesn't seem to be the answer as i'm sure its against some kind of european law, but there are three ways in which you could bring it to a equal level and get rid of a lot of the unnecessary spending in football.
1) Get rid of agents and agent fee's, If a player wants an agent they should pay for him themselves.
2) Have an overall wage cap for the clubs, so £700,000pw for example, this way its becomes tactical for the clubs on who they have, do you have a torres and ronaldo and then the rest of the teams made up by championship players, or steady prem players like Sidwell, Defoe etc to make up a squad who don't ask for the world in wages. It becomes a balancing act then for the managers and chairmen. Obviously you would need different wage boundries for the diffrerent leagues.
3) Have a transfer cap. If you had a maximum worldwide transfer cap or £5 mill then players would maybe show more loyalty to their current clubs, as with £5 mill man utd and chelsea cant go out and buy every player under the sun as they wont be able to keep them happy. This should then hopefully mean players show more loyalty to clubs and clubs dont spend such silly amounts on transfer fee's. The only downside to this is that their would be no wage cap and so players would get even higher wages, but it should still bring the cost of football down.
Hope this makes sense.
I think a wage cap would be a great idea. It's the only way to stop billionaire-owned clubs continuing to raise the bar further and further at how much money they're willing to throw at players who, like Robinho, are extremely talented, but no Maradona or Pele.
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