Of course, but the point was that the FFP issue wasn't caused by promotion bonuses as the OP was speculating.
They might well have exacerbated the issue, but we were projected to exceed the threshold regardless.
Transfer Rumours Summer 2026 Transfer Thread…
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They might well have exacerbated the issue, but we were projected to exceed the threshold regardless.
Are you Norwegian or do you live in Norway? I had a look on Sofascore and he’s Mr. Consistent judging by his ratings of 7.26 for the 2025 season and 7.58 for the 2026 season so far. I know stats can be deceiving but ratings like that over a season would suggest he’s one of the best players in the league.
I read he’s a really strong, dominant centre-back but also good at playing out from the back.
I don't think everyone would have hefty promotion increases in their wages or we wouldn't be able to sell anyone, as Palmer, Burstow etc. would be in the same boat.
Milwall made a lot selling Esse and are likely pre-empting the sale of Azeez with any proposed spending. They'd be under no illusions that if they want to compete for promotion this coming season they will need to spend at least modestly, and Joseph for 5m as a proven Championship scorer (like Conway) isn't that big a gamble.
Yeah i’m Norwegian, i’ve heard only good things about him and all the top clubs have been sniffing around him for some time now as he’s gone under the radar a bit. I wouldn’t put him straight into the starting 11 tho, if we’re looking at the norwegian market we should look at players like Hjertø-Dahl and Sedi Kinteh. They’re ready to go straight into the starting 11 and have huge financial upside. Smajlovic would be a good rotation piece and could go into the starting 11 in about a years time. If we go down again he would be a perfect starter and probably a top 10 centre back in the Championship imo
Nice. I’d like us to sign two centre-backs this summer. One to go straight into the starting XI who preferably has experience playing in the Prem or one of the other four top European leagues and another like Smajlović as an investment for the future. I think Hughes has potential to go for a lot of money if he has a good season in the Prem so it would be nice to have his long-term replacement already at the club. If not Smajlović, I like Ismaël Baouf.
I agree, Baouf would be a good signing aswell. I’ve seen a bit of him as i family around that place and he’s a really good prospect. I would like us to for Harwood-Bellis if he’s around the 20m mark, prem proven and will hold his value well or even rise in value. Even though its a fairly hefty price its a low risk investment for a player who would be a key part of the core. Need players who knows the Premier League aswell, would pave the way for us to sign more players with the Titraoui type profile
On the topic the other day about how our 100m budget doesn't feel like it stretches far if we're being quoted 20m for signings. Just a reminder if we sign Harwood-Bellis for 20m on, say, a 5 year deal, he's only costing us 4m + wages in this coming year. So it's not as significant a chunk of our budget as it looks on the face of it.
You are calculating it wrong. Based on that assumption, we can spend almost £300m on raw transfer fees, which is not right.
Typically the 100m budget quoted in the media already incorporate amortization and doesn't allow for wages, so as it's a dumbed down, easy figure for fans to look at entire transfer fees.
The real figure is likely £30-£35m in head room for transfer + agent fees in our SCR forecasts.. Your £4m + agent fees should be deducted from 35m, not 100m... a 20m signing will absolutely translate to around 25% of our transfer budget.
Our turnover is likely going to be ~£150m based on recent broadcast revenue increases vs a team like Sheffield United with similar, if not slightly larger, commercial revenues.
Typical wage to revenue ratios for smaller clubs are 50-60% which will put the wage Bill at circa £90m for next season. Luton is the lowest in PL history at 52%.
SCR rules probably in reality means anywhere from £30m-£45m in head room depending on owner fines being paid if above 85% SCR thresholds.
Not every player will be on a 5 year deal, as there's inherent risks in that in itself and agent fees typically average around 10% of the transfer fee.
~30m x 3.5 years as an average amortisation = £100m transfer budget being quoted in the media, give or take, prior to any sales (of which we don't have any comparable ones to say Sunderland and Bellingham).
Id be surprised if we are able to/or do end up spending over £100m in raw transfer fees. They should have just renamed it the Brighton/Bournemouth/Brentford rule as it severely neuters what they have been doing the last 4-5 years, as player selling now doesn't expand your revenue and buying potential anywhere near as much as it did under PSR as profits need to be realised over 3 accounting periods and can't be injected as a lump into that year.
SCR at its core is far more restrictive to smaller clubs than the bigger ones as smaller clubs have been relying on transfer revenues to spend on the same level as the bigger clubs. The bigger clubs don't need transfer revnues, as their commercial revenues match their broadcast revenues year on year.
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I'm not calculating it wrong. If we have a 100m budget, spending 20m on a player is not 20% of our budget, which is all I am pointing out.
A 20m transfer fee on a 5 year contract is amortised at 4m a year. I have not calculated that wrong.
As to what our actual budget is, of course that's for the club to know and us to speculate. I'm just clarifying the perception that 100m as a budget doesn't go far if we're spending 20m on a player.
Of course not every player will be on 5 yr deals, but not every player will cost 20m either.
You ARE calculating it wrong, as we don't have a 100m budget POST amortisation budget to spend. So the basis of your entire point IS wrong.
It's not "speculation", there's enough information to know exactly how much we have to spend next season. There's no magic bucket of money falling from the clouds or additional 50,000 seats and commercial boxes being added to the MKM in the next few weeks.
Our commercial revenues when compared to those same teams who have been in both the Championship and PL in recent seasons is easy to compare and public information.
We know exactly what the TV revenues are for next season.
Our turnover is going to be £140-£160m depending on finishing position prize monies.
Our wage bill is going to be in the £80-£100m range. It can't be less than this as we aren't Luton and it wont be more than that unless we want to turn into Leicester and have even less to spend on transfers.
The 85% SCR rules dictate our squad budget to be £120m (conservatively). Then we have the £80m-£100m in wages.
So we then have £35-£45m in head room. Of which you will lose 10% of that in agent fees.
Please explain to me where the other £60m (which is actually £70m in turnover adjusting for 85%) is magically appearing from to achieve £100m post amortisation?
Teams with SCR head room with that turnover for this season are the likes of Everton and Leeds, so you are saying we have commercial revenues compared to those two?
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It is speculation as we don't know how much we have to spend next season. We know we are intending to spend money on infrastructure, as one example that would require money to be taken from any budget for the team. We don't know what our sponsorship revenues will be for next season, for instance, which would contribute to our potential playing budget. We don't know how much money is already tied up with the current playing squad (as we don't know what their wages have risen to, or any associated add-ons off the back of promotion), for instance, which would impact our potential playing budget.
There are a number of intangibles that we don't know as posters on this board.
My post was purely and explicitly highlighting a concern a poster had made that our 100m budget doesn't extend far if we are spending 20m on a player, and served to clarify that spending 20m on a player is not 20% of a perceived 100m budget. The only calculation in my post was that a 20m deal on a 5 year deal is 4m in the current year plus any associated wages. I am therefore not calculating anything wrong.
Your '100m post amortisation' is a complete fallacy and nothing that I or anyone else has quoted or spoken to anywhere insofar as you are using a false equivalence of my explaining how a transaction is booked as suggesting that we will be essentially buying 500m of players on 5 year deals. Once you clarified that our wage bill makes up a chunk of our committed spend (which my post specifically called out as being part of the yearly cost of the player) you may realise we are essentially saying the same thing.
All I have said is that IF our budget is 100m for transfers then we have more to play with than people think. You are absolutely correct that our real budget for transfers may be entirely different, but that wasn't the point I addressed, nor can anyone with any confidence say what the actual figure is.
I have responded to a hypothetical scenario with an example of a transaction in said hypothetical scenario, and my calculation was correct. If your issue is with said hypothetical scenario that's fine and one thing, but entirely separate to the point that I was making and to my calculation which you keep insisting is wrong.
As an aside, you very dismissively suggested we won't see any additional sponsorship revenue as some 'magic bucket of funds from the clouds', despite the billionaires circling Acun at the play off final. Before we get too insistent on how clever we are and knowing exactly what our budget is, let's just wait and see, eh?
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Any infrastructure spending is purely a cashflow issue. It doesn't impact on the budget at all for the team.
SCR calculations in relation to revenue are only player wages, amortisation transfer fees, agent fees and strictly the managers wages ONLY for non playing staff.
Not even the managers backroom staff, coaches, data analysts etc are included in SCR calcs.
It's really quite simple. There's only a few numbers that need to be considered, all of which can be easily forecasted and most of which are public information. Turnover, Wages and Liabilities. Thats it. Less 15% - the balance is your total pre-amortisation transfer budget.
As I said, sponsorship revenues will be reflective of a club our size. Even with the Acun factor, even if you want to triple it, it doesn't get anywhere near what is required to move the needle to the extend you are saying. Some of the biggest clubs in the PL rake in £40m max per season from sponsorship. The smaller clubs are around £10m.
In regards to your wages, again, this isn't speculation. We aren't spending £30m on our wage budget for next season to enable that transfer budget, it's simply not possible.
Every year, year on year, clubs sit in the 50-70% range of turnover.
How do you think the likes of Swiss Ramble etc are calculating this in the first place? There's mountains of public information here to make a very informed estimate. There is very little speculation about it.
We aren't capable of spending £300m like your example is able to be expanded too...
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I think the key thing you seem to be missing in all of these posts is that transfer budget includes wages. Perhaps you missed this way back in my first post in your insistence to claim my workings were wrong?
So went on your very detailed (and completely accurate) breakdown of where our spending will be committed, you differentiated our inflated wage bill from any spend on transfer fees, whilst my post was including the two.
For example, a THB on a 5 year deal at a 20m fee on, perhaps, 60k a week, is an annual commitment of roughly 7m. If our transfer budget is truly 100m and includes both transfer fees and wages (because, of course it would, I don't know why you felt the need to try to separate those), then it represents 7% of our budget, not 27%.
I don't think you and I are saying particularly different things, which is why I was a bit bemused by your opening point being that my calculations were wrong. The only thing I can think is you have read my post and taken my point to be that our transfer budget = transfer fees, not our transfer budget = amortised cost of transfer fee + annual wage.
We spent 32m on wages in F25. Even conservatively estimating our wages being say, 40m this past year, you're acknowledging we expect to spend close to 60m in additional wages next year. So when you ask where the additional 60m in our transfer budget is coming from, you've actually answered your own question.
I think we have a specific FFP/PSR thread where this discussion could probably be had to save people looking for transfer rumours from this sort of discussion.
My post about the Brazilian winger we seem to have had a bid accepted for will otherwise be lost amongst all this noise.
My post about the Brazilian winger we seem to have had a bid accepted for will otherwise be lost amongst all this noise.
I haven't missed wages at all. I stated them quite clearly.
Here are the lowest wage bills of the last 3 years:
Luton 23/24 - £56m
Wolves 25/26 - £65.1
Sheff Utd - 23/24 - £65.2
Brentford 25/26 - £71m
Burnley 25/26 - £73m
Luton spent £27m on transfers in that season
Sheff Utd spent £54m on transfers that season
Burnley spent £87m on transfers that season.
Given we believe we are going to rebuild most of the starting XI and we are two years in the future to some of these figures I think £80-£90m is a reasonable estimate. Wages and Transfer amounts go hand in hand. If we don't buy players, we wont be signing them to PL wages. Which means we wont be spending the £100m regardless.
In your example, we'd be able to make 14 transfers (£7m / £100m) the same size of THB to fit inside our budget with a total gross transfer amount of £285m (£20m x 14.2), which would almost be 200% of entire forecasted club turnover......
Surely you can see this is wrong, the post amortisation number is far lower than £100m. It's £30-£40m