I have been reading recently (and also looking at the books prompted by a bluenose about how we've reduced our wages over the past while and how some folks think that means we can add a marquee player in. Players sold/loaned summer 2013 Reina (£100,000p/w) Andy Carroll (£90,000p/w) Jamie Carragher (£80,000p/w) Jonjo Shelvey (£18,000p/w) total saving of £288,000 each and every week. Players purchases summer 2013 Mignolet (£50k p/w approximately) Toure (£60k approximately) Alberto (£20k) Aspas (£30-40k) Additional of approximately £170k per week Net saving to the club: £118k per week OR 6.136 million pounds * we know however carrol got at least 1 mil to go away. If you look back a year Summer off loads 2012 Aquilani (£90k), Joe Cole (£90k), Kuyt (£70k), Maxi (£70k), Bellamy (£70K) Charlie Adam (£50k). Potential saving of total saving of £370,000 each and every week. Potential but not actual as the books show a 3million payment to cole to get shut of him Purchases 2012 Allen (45k), Borini (£45k) Sturridge (65k) Coutinho (12.5k according to wiki!??) it says 600k euros per year.. which is mad... new contract urgently required Assaidi (20k) Sahin (50k) contracts awarded 2012 Luis Suarez +55k/week Daniel Agger +25k/week Martin Skrtel +25k/week. Wage increases 2012: £342.5k per week Net 2012 saving: £27.5/week or 1.43 million. My conclusions: LFC are not done on that wages. We keep forgetting the club is still not saved and it is not now in europe so just cos we reduced the wage bill by X does not mean we can go out and then hire in more guys at the same x figure. The club can't afford the wage leve it was at and must reduce to start generating a positive cash flow and stop relying on FSG hand outs. You can't just go easily find an LFC set of accounts like you can for arsenal or Utd etc just look at this here...http://www.theliverpoolword.com/2013/04/liverpool-f-c-s-recent-accounts-reading-beyond-the-numbers/ Our revenue was projected to break 200mil in 2013 and i believe in 2012 It did actually hit that mark. However look to the operating expenses, 145mil in 2012 and projected to hit 170mil in 2013. sound sok but look deeper if you look at the picture in it's entirety of pay offs, losses and players sucking the teat having left the club you find massive leaking of resource. Our revenue to expenses gap isn't providing enough liquidity to cover the ongoing non cash expenses. for instance it is said we paid Inter 4.25 mil upfront for coutinho... bargain... but that other 4.25mil has to come from someplace... it all adds up like that to a pre tax loss. this is why i believe there is a hit list in Ian Ayres desk drawer with the names of our higher earners on it. please log in to view this image This list comes right off that link Look at it.... 't is probably out of date on suarez as he is on a reputed 120k per week but the numbers are interesting. why is henderson linked to being moved on quite a lot? 60k per week wages... who the F paid him that!!! Pepe is gone skertl is on the list as to go seeing rodgers dropped him. 75k to save or so. We all want downing gone and rodgers had targetted him early on In short do not expect players to arrive at Anfield without others going. I honestly believe that for papadopolos to arrive skertl will have to go for example. finally i don't view this as "bad" at all. I view this as the club having to get real and sort itself out. It is not a CL club and can't pay CL wages to players who don't play week in and week out and especially those who have no real sell on value. phillipe coutinho is LFc's best and cheapest player. Expect him to be given a new deal very shortly.... that or be sold on.
The best way to look at wages is as a % of revenue. Even with CL football, our percentage to revenue was very high. Then we fell out of CL and the percentage increased further. In addition, paying high wages for players is the norm for big clubs and big players. The problem we had was that we were paying big wages for players who didn't deserve it hence we didn't receive any benefit. Players like Joe Cole, Aquilani, Carroll weren't repaying their costs. EDIT - the person who was negotiating those contracts should be shot!
MITO, I'm glad you entitled this thread a debate because that is what you have hopefully initiated. I'm not going to argue with any of the figures. However, I feel it may be useful to present an alternative view of what they represent and what they may mean. Firstly, with all of the focus at the moment upon transfers it is too easy to be wrapped up in the headline transfer fee and not even think about the consequences on the level and ramifications of the 'personal terms' agreed with the player. As your figures clearly demonstrate these personal terms have a major effect upon any clubs transfer strategy and in fact the very wellbeing of the club itself. The typical responses by clubs have been to either impose a salary cap or to state that they will manage the problem on an individual basis (generally this means that they will live with the problem). FSG appear to have decided that one of their major steps towards achieving their self-sustaining objective is to manage the (and be seen to manage) the wage bill. Therefore it is the direction of travel that is the important thing rather than the balancing of the number crunching. At the moment LFC appear to be travelling in the right direction. Therefore the direction of travel appears to predict that this strategy will assist them in their financing of future purchases in the mid to long term future. However, as this strategy becomes more embedded in the club it can have probably unforeseen consequences as you have highlighted with Coutinho! There comes a point where the wage rules declare that he is sold without reference to his transfer value or replacement costs!
good point. % of revenue is one key factor. it is a good target for ensuring you have a balance on it. the accruals of transfers over time should also be taken into account as well to ensure spending never tips us into the red unless really thought through. You are also dead right baout who got said wages.... ok cole was a free so its a case of accounting for his expense in wages only but not if you damned well give him 3mil to go away.
Well it's logical at a non sugar daddy club that has a recent history of overpaying both fees & wages to players that frankly were never worth it. Buy to Sell? I agree with this. Why collect players in a position on 50k+ a week until you get the right one? Worse on long term deals...that's why we pay a scouting team & manager, if they get it wrong too often Resulting in no progress waiting for the ability to offload & they get sacked. It's also why the academy is important : do the speculating at that stage when it costs practically nothing to bring then in on masse. at worst nothing to let go or make a tidy profit or at best they come into the squad and we don't have to buy ready made players You also tie in the whole performance related pay for the first team which means newcomers aren't expecting to automatically match the incumbent stars wages without proving their worth in our shirt. The wages will collectively get higher if we process to CL and then on in actually winning stuff, but then we'll be making more money. Our problem is we're still in the getting rid of the big money for nothing players while only just seeing the fruits of the academy starting to emerge while trying to convince new guys to ignore the fact they're getting paid less than the downings and yes in terms of minutes for money the skrrts as well. We have to do it finance wise its just seeing if the sugar daddy clubs make it a pointless exercise not in terms of us being a well run club but in terms of being able to ever actually compete for the main two trophies again. Not impossible, getting a few multi hit years like united did through the youth set up but difficult. It's less disheartening as a fan to see a gamble not pay off for 6 million on 30k for 3 years than 18 million on 70k a week for 5 years.
I hope it does. I lifted most figures from elsewhere but tried to put a spin on it from my point of view and so a debating point. I might be totally wrong! I was shocked to see what coutinho was reportedly on so we really lucked in here. It does seem to me that there is some footballing logic somewhere in this in that rodgers first told downing to go do one then when he would not shift he worked his way back in. He's rejected another move again its rumoured so is my "prediction" of a hit list got high earners on it and any unsurity or an opportunity means the club will jump. If for exmaple someone turned up with say 8mil would we sell glen johnson for it... cos his wages are high and we've two young players to back fill? another example is the rumoured interest with napoli on skertl which have rumbled for a year. If they actually offer will we sell even if papa is not actually lined up? Or is reina a bad example of this as his case was special. i don't know you guys tell me.
The academy is also a good point. Again i wrote that players of an era thing yesterday and actually thought hey... every manager bar rafa got a great boost form the youths.. it took rafa 5 years to rebuild the thing and now rodgers is reaping the reward... is it sustaining? whoes the next 15year old to look at, who did the academy bring in this summer... There were a few. If the wages i found are to be believed aspas, alberto and coutinho have a huge reason to perform at lfc... to attract a bigger wage! I think it'll be interesting to see who goes next. Downing is on year 3 of his deal, johnson looks fit but is 28? skertl is on his way out, henderson would want to seriously be questioned as a squad player if this is accurate. http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/new...ack-Manchester-United-move-article744264.html For me if he is on 60k then comolli and ayre want slapping. i tink ayre has it together in some regard now but 60k per week for a 21 year old? he'd better force allen out of the team this year if thats the case.
Top performers in any business are paid what their market value is & an element of that is usually performance related. If a particular highly paid individual's performance starts to dip, then performance management of that individual would usually be undertaken, ultimately resulting in the termination of their employment if they didn't get their performance back up to a level deemed acceptable. All you're seeing at Liverpool now imo, is players who are paid fortunes, being analysed in terms of what their contribution is / is likely to be moving forwards & those at the higher end of the payscale who are deemed to be being paid beyond their current value - are being systematically binned off.
