It looks like the transfer window is closing with no more incoming business for us, and Zohore may leave on loan if we can find a professional football club that wants him. Reminder, that this season we are lucky enough to receive a parachute payment of around £45m. Factoring in gate receipts, sponsorship and commercial income our overall income this year is around £55m.
Our wage bill the last time we got relegated from the Premiership dropped from £102 to £52.8m and that was pretty much the high water mark for our wage bill. Last season our wage bill once we got promoted under Bilic including promotion bonus hit £59.7m (circa £40m wages & £20m bonus - paying them back for the flex down).
Since relegation we have lost the loanees (Okay, Diagne) and also released or loaned out Ivanovic, Hegazi, Gibbs, Sawyers, Peltier, Austin, Edwards, Harper, Grosicki, Longergan and of course sold Pereira. We have signed Reach (free), Mowatt (fee), Clarke (loan), Hugill (loan) and Molumby (loan).
Based on what we know I would be amazed if our wage bill was more than £45m at present and I think £40m is more realistic against our income this year of £55m. The point of all of this is that we didn't need to sell Pereira to pay the bills, we could have kept him, instead we have sold him and also not reinvested the money back into the squad. That might end up costing us promotion, not to mention of course the huge and unaffordable cost we face of trying to sign premier league players of his quality if we do get promoted.
I'm enjoying this season so far but realistic that with the way we are operating we would be relegated easily if we do go up, as this squad cannot compete in the Premiership. At some point the board need to learn that once you get to the premiership you can & must spend more than one years TV income to build the squad up; else you end up at best just bouncing up and down.
This kind of leads on from a point i made a few days ago.
There was a report leaked in may 2019 from the EFL, multiple places reported it, that stated the average top earner was £29k in the championship. The highest top earner was £69k (obviously Fulham at the time). If we take out that top earner, that average top earner drops to £27k. I cant' imagine that number has gone up post covid. If anything it will have dropped.
Now obviously as an ex-prem club, we would be one of the higher ones, but surely we don't have an entire squad earning what you'd have to be a top earner at other clbus to earn. Not when you consider O'Shea, Furlong, Townsend, Palmer, Button, Clarke, Molumby, Reach, Kipre, and their careers.
What i mean by their careers, lets take Connor Townsend for example. At scunthorpe on maybe 3k per week and we are interested for £500k. I imagine he'd have joined for the step up let alone any pay rise. Accepitng this is football and he probably did get an increase , maybe we sensibly offer 5k per week and the opportunity.
Since then he has become first choice left back, but we have been relegated too, so even with a new contract (but nobody banging down the door to sign him) he's on well under £20k per week.
However, even if we toss all the above out and we do have 20 players on 27k. That is a £28m wage bill per annum.
We have absolutely cut a lot of cloth and unless Dowling is a bigger fool than I thought our wages surely can't be anything like £40m.
There must be some money about, and i'd agree we didnt have to sell Pereira. At least not financially. Otherwise we seriously need to look at how poor we are at negotiating contacts.
