They won't affect many clubs. £105 million loss over three seasons is more than most clubs spend over three seasons anyway!
A ridiculous false gesture from the PL to make it seem as if they are taking the ludicrous football finances seriously! 105 million over 3 years as said above is a huge amount and much more than the majority of teams will make, especially as it does not even include stadia and academies. Restraining wages to "just 52 million" is also a joke. For a 25 man squad that would still be an average wage of around 40k! And that will still increase by an average of 3k per week per player. This will make very little difference and certainly wont even things up as the "big" clubs who have spent vast sums of money already have the largest revenue streams so will still be spending more than anyone else. Teams always find a way round it as well e.g. selling the stadium name to their own companies for way over the odds. But it is still considered revenue. I guess you could say it is a step in the right direction but the cynic in me says this is going to make no difference.
Edit: Ah, whilst I've been writing this Tipsy appears to have made the majority of my post for me! So if I've got this right, the £105m over 3 seasons is effectively the amount of money an owner can put in over that time from his own pocket. So if a club spend more than £35m a season of their owners money, they'll lose points. However, as it doesn't effect commercial dealings, I'm guessing that instead of the money coming from "Bank of Fernandes/Abramovich/Mansour" it'll come into the club through a ludicrous sponsorship dealing. Cue headlines "Caterham F1 to pay £100m a year to sponsor the subs bench". I can't see it having a great effect, if anything it'll make owners sneakier about how they get the money into clubs, making it harder to find out exactly how much they're putting in. I don't think it's a brilliant implementation. In wages, £52m is covering a 25 man playing squad, a manager, 4-5 footballing backroom staff, Chairman, CEO (etc), and I'd assume the youth set-up too. For the sake of argument, let's say that leaves £40m for the 25 man squad, or an average of £31 000 per player per week. That probably fits with having 7 clubs under that: us, Swansea, Reading, Southampton, Wigan would be 5 I'd definitely put in that category, then maybe West Ham, Stoke or Sunderland? Assuming the £4m increase each season only goes on players, which seems pretty likely to me, that allows 1 player to be paid £76 000 a week, or an increase across the squad of £3100 each per week. I think that £76 000 figure is going to be the key one. Right now, I'm guessing only Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal and perhaps Spurs and Liverpool would be in the market to buy a player demanding that kind of money. To make those big signings, it probably means big players are going to have to be moved on first. Overall, I think the £105m figure won't mean a thing, but the £4m a year wage increase could well turn out to be interesting.
Got to agree with all this. It will be interesting to see if the figure for wages is just for players or throughout the club. Also I can see clubs compromising this by offering players huge financial bonuses which will equate to their salaries being as high as they are now. Also do you think any club would ever feel it is worth taking the risk of a points deduction in order to bring in a mega signing? Unlikely. But for arguments sake say Messi wanted to leave Barca. Would Man City consider getting Messi for say 150 million despite potentially losing a couple of points? After all he may well be work more than that to them.
I think it'd be an interesting dilemma. Take Van Persie this season, arguably he's been the difference between the Manchester clubs. Would United give up 2,3 points to keep him, probably. I guess it'll depend on the magnitude of the penalties.
I'd like to think so, I imagine it'll come down to a technicality in the rules, and whether double jeopardy applies. Say the rules were applied for this season, and Van Persie is on £150k a week. That gives him a yearly wage of £8m, so would take United over the threshold, and they'd get a penalty. Once that's happened, they're still very likely to be over for the next season. So in this example, for the 2013-14 season, are United unable to increase their wage bill because they blew it a year too soon, or does the points deduction mean they still get an increase of £4m per season, despite the fact they went over? Another question will be whether the £4m increase is applied to the actual wage spend in a year, or to the cap for that year. For example, if a clubs budget is £100m in year 1, in year 2 it's £104m, and in year 3 you'd expect it to be £108m. But what happens if they're under and only spend £102m in year 2? Does it increase by £6m or £4m for year 3? If it's a £4m increase on what you actually spent the previous year, then you could end up with the bizarre situation of clubs actually trying to spend as much of their wage allocation as possible on short term deals, so that for the next season they'll have a greater gap in their wages to slot in a luxury player. If Man City project they'll be underspending on wages by £1m in a season, do they offer loads of 12-month deals to players with no chance of playing, just to get them the allowance for the following season. That would hardly be FFP!
I agree that it's a token gesture that won't make a great deal of difference (surprise, surprise), but to play devil's advocate, and I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I reckon some of the big boys - United, City and Chelsea at least - may actually struggle to keep down to the £52m a year salary. Even their squad players who don't play a lot like Malouda, Toure, Lescott, Nani, Wellbeck, Scholes, Maicon, Benayoun etc are probably on more than 40k a week, and when you chuck in the extremities like Tevez, Rooney, RVP, Terry, Lampard, Aguero etc who are on £150k+ the numbers all soon start adding up. No doubt they'll wriggle around it somehow, find some loophole with bonuses or something, but hopefully it might mean more young English players will start getting a chance and we might see more of these super academies bearing some real fruit. How good was Wilshere the other night by the way?
Wilshere was brilliant the other night, looks as though he is going to be a huge talent. I honestly don't think he would look out of place in the Barca team. Some of his passing and vision was world class, especially the ball he played into Walcott in the first half. He will need to manage his temperament and make sure he keeps making progress and I think we have a cracking player there. On the new rules, I agree with what has been said. Loopholes will be found, but I do think that wage cap will be difficult for the bigger, richer teams in the division.
Tony, I think one of us has misinterpreted the rules. My interpretation is that the teams can spend as much as they like on wages, but as soon as it goes over £52m a year, they are only allowed to increase their wage budget by £4m a year. So if our budget this year was £30m, we could increase to £52m next season, but after that the £4m increase kicks in. For clubs already over £52m in wages, the £4m increase comes into immediate effect.
If the wage cap is an issue then you could see clubs bending the rules by setting up separate employment companies and employing players via the football club up to the limit and then paying players as consultants or for non-football image rights or as a representative for the owners main business. For every rule the likes of FIFA bring in the clubs and agents will find a way round it - will "wages" include pension/benefits in kind such as loan or gift of cars/houses etc. Will monies be paid to agents which then get filtered through to the players? For example an agent instead of charging 10% signing on fee gets 20% but then "refunds" the monies to the player? you can bet your life that as we are conversing about this there are a lot of very well paid lawyers and accountants working for the billionaire owners working out a way to circumvent the rules. I am also not sure if a wage cap on EU citizens is legal under current employment rights or human rights legislation - if it is a grey area I am sure we will soon see a Bosman-like test case from the first of the mega-clubs it inconveniences. I am sure that the likes of Man U could argue that the wage cap is a restriction on their trade as it will not allow them to compete in a global market. I wouldn't want to have to defend that one if I were the PL.
I am also not sure if a wage cap on EU citizens is legal under current employment rights or human rights legislation - if it is a grey area I am sure we will soon see a Bosman-like test case from the first of the mega-clubs it inconveniences. I am sure that the likes of Man U could argue that the wage cap is a restriction on their trade as it will not allow them to compete in a global market. I wouldn't want to have to defend that one if I were the PL. I think this could be the very case Nbhoy. It could be argued that in no other form of EU employment a wage cap is applied so why football?
You're right chap, it was I who had done the misinterpreting. Hadn't read it all properly when I posted, now I have it jumps out as an even bigger waste of time!
I suppose we can take some comfort in the fact that the FA are actively looking to do something and have realised the false reality in which football lives in. As you have said though this measure is comparable to a drop in the ocean and may never be enough but I'm hopeful it is the start of the process that leads club down the 'fit and proper' pathway to running clubs, however I think things are going to get worse before they get better and this will obviously ruffle a few feathers, but hopefully the FA can show it's spine and prove it does want to bring football back onto an even keel and back into the real world
Re bending the rules on wage caps, isn't that what Rangers (glasgow, not Queens park wubba don't worry) did with their pension trusts? not exactly the same, but you can see it happening can't you? rather than paying a bonus or wage to a player, it's an interest free loan. or they are given share options rather than paid wages in cash. i think it's a move in the right direction, but if clubs want to overspend they will find a way.
Well it has worked in Rugby for a while, and I haven't seen a big legal case about that. Whilst the Aviva Premiership does lose some players to the French league because France doesn't have a wage cap, the standard in the Premiership is still very high. I suppose the football equivalent would be a lot of players from England demanding too large wages going to PSG, Barcelona, Real Madrid, or the Turkish and Russian leagues which suddenly seem flushed with cash. However, that already happens to an extent, and I'd much rather our league be world renowned for the quality of competition, than being a league for mercenary players after ever higher pay packets.
You've got to hand it to Mark Hughes. He foresaw this before anyone else and put us in the best possible position to be able to avoid these Premier League regulations. Genius.
Given the startling contrast between player wages in the PL and virtually every other comparable league (with the exception of one or two clubs like Anzha, Barca, Real etc.), you might think that PL clubs would actually welcome a quite severe cap on wages. There is no doubt in my mind that money is the principal attraction of the PL for foreign players. All the stuff you hear about "best league in the world" is -- to use the currently popular word on here -- bollocks. How many really top class players come to the PL in their prime? Why would Messi, Iniesta, Xavi and the like EVER want to come? We get the continentals and others who are not of that standard, or who want a final pay day and will endure the PL downsides (huge number of fixtures, weather, risk of injury, below par facilities (look how many go back home for treatment), etc.) as long as the money rolls in. Those players would still come as long as there was enough of a differential over what they can command elsewhere. What drives the wages up is the rivalry between the handful of top clubs vying for the title and/or a place in the European Championship. If a severe cap was put on wages, clubs could stop the spiral of rising ticket prices, invest more in academies and local development etc.
I think the legality of a wage cap may have come up before when there were talks of introducing one. Maybe it is only illegal to have a wage cap on individual salaries but ok to enforce a wage budget for a club? This way it is not individuals rights being affected and the company can still pay more to those who they deem to be worth it. Also clubs will look to make more money as they can only make so much of a loss, so this could potentially lead to an increase in ticket prices etc. Although they are already very high so hopefully this would not be the case
