You may not realise JWM, but for a while now you've been very much Jekykl and Hide, on your board as well as ours, tbh it's only your previous good behaviour that has kept you from a more serious slap on the wrist! No offence mate, but it needed pointing out!
I don't really go on lower leagues forums, but I found myself for the first time ever checking, Villa, QPR, Southampton forums, basically teams who are in the relegation battle.
Just to back this up my youngest daughter went out until last year with a lad who went through the academy of a professional club but was released. He then went to University, got a degree, found full time employment in this area and started to play non-league football. He was paid an annual signing on fee of £1000 and £100 a week during the season to play for a club 3 levels beneath the Conference Premier. The following year he played for a club one level up for an annual signing on fee of £2000 and £120 a week during the season and last year he went up one level again for a one off signing on fee of £5000 and a 2 year contract of £200 a week all the year round. For that he had to train/play 2 nights a week plus Saturday and the time spent playing, travelling and training was the reason my daughter gave him up. He is just one of 18 players in the first team squad of a club one step from the Conference Premier - where do these Clubs get the money from?
Just doing the maths on that, assuming the guy mentioned was an average earner, that means that a conference north/south side would be spending £5330 a week on average in wages, or £277 200 annually. Having a look online, average Conference South attendances are anything from 300-1800, with tickets £10-15. The league has 22 teams, so 21 home games. Using these, that would mean a team with cheap tickets and low end attendances make £63 000, or £378 000 at the top end. That would give an average of £220 500, which,when you factor in sponsorship, and takings from away ticket sales, cup games, etc, might actually mean that clubs can support those kind of wages. It's a really rough, back of the envelope calculation, ignoring season tickets, etc, but actually, that they any team can support wages like that in the conference south on ticket sales alone was a surprise to me. Football is crazy.
