Salary Cap? | Page 5 | Vital Football

Salary Cap?

Luke Imp said:
Interesting read from Bradford's end. Vote put back a week.

https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co...ams-speak-sudden-changes-salary-cap-proposal/
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"It is a huge bonus for Bolton, who are understood to have shelled out big wages on Eoin Doyle and Antoni Sarcevic – both well in excess of the amount they will take up in the permitted budget.

Doyle, for example, has been signed on a three-year deal – which would qualify at the £68,000 annual rate in the cap for the length of the contract."

Surprise, surprise!
 
Just my opinion, and I’m just a guy on the internet with no relevance but:

Not sure I’m a big fan of a flat salary cap. Sunderland should be able to spend more than us as they sustainably can.

Evidently some action needs to be taken, I imagine only Peterborough think everything is fine in clubs finances at the moment.

FFP has failed. It appears to be too lenient and too many loopholes.

Is there anyway a cap could be introduced that is done through audits and reports into incomes and expenses similar to those that banks and building societies are subject to (post 2008 ones)?

Essentially monthly reporting that clubs can survive for the next year or so with no owner investment or selling club assets (stadium etc.). This would then be monitored and audited by the EFL/FA/whoever throughout the year to ensure honest reporting.

I don’t know what already exists and I’m sure Scotimp will enjoy tearing the idea apart with realism.
 
Scotimp said:
"It is a huge bonus for Bolton, who are understood to have shelled out big wages on Eoin Doyle and Antoni Sarcevic – both well in excess of the amount they will take up in the permitted budget.

Doyle, for example, has been signed on a three-year deal – which would qualify at the £68,000 annual rate in the cap for the length of the contract."

Surprise, surprise!
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Indeed, big surprise.
And Bradford and the other clubs totally entitled to be angry with Bolton.
About time there were chucked out totally.
 
Article in the Times on Wednesday mentioned salary cap vote gone back a week and some clubs want if deferred for a season "because of the impact on coronavirus". Seems to me that context makes the need for the discipline imposed by a cap even more compelling to safeguard clubs and the game as a whole and wondered what Clive's view on this is - seems I have my answer.

The perpetual financially incontinent clubs like Bolton are bending the rules before they're even in place and for the sake of the EFLs future needs to be dealt with expeditiously and with firmness.
 
Not really very surprising.

The PFA is a Union. It's 'raison d'être' is to protect and/or improve it's members working conditions. A salary cap puts a ceiling on those working conditions and that is not in it's members' interests. Raising the possibility of a legal challenge (by any one of it's members) should scare the b'jesus out of the EFL and the clubs and I am surprised that it is not an issue that has surfaced before.

If it is true that the EFL has not consulted with the PFA on the proposal of a salary cap then, quite frankly, it looks like yet another EFL cock up to me.

I am not saying that the PFA's position is correct, just that they have the potential to be a huge spanner in the works and when I raised the question on another thread, as to whether post-Covid player wages would be depressed over the long term, this is one of the hurdles that I had in mind.

There are an awful lot of vested interests in the beautiful game (i.e. the money making machine that is football) and none of them want to give up power. Just remember that is why we have a Premier League, an EFL, the FA, FIFA and a National League etc. etc. and not just one body governing everything (God forbid that we go down the route that boxing has).

Money and power. Power and money.

But maybe I am just far too cynical and a little worse for a bottle of alcohol.
 
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Strange one really. Accept lower wages for your members, or go against it and potentially have far less of them. Not quite a turkey/Christmas situation, more stopping them getting fat enough for the dinner table.
 
I'm not sure how the PFA could legally challenge it unless I've got how this proposal works totally wrong. The cap is not limiting an individual but just how much the club spends as a whole, obviously that does eventually put a top limit on players but that is really down to how the clubs spreads it's funds up to the cap not a hard limit.
 
The full document from the PFA is well worth looking at,

https://www.thepfa.com/-/media/Files/PFA---EFL-Salary-Cap-Proposals.pdf?la=en

In particular a few stats that stand out,

  1. A nice graph showing wages to revenue ratios for L1 & L2 over the last 10 years (77% - 94% for L1 and 69% - 78% for L2; both rising recently)
  2. The average ratio between income for the top and bottom clubs over the last 5 years in L1 and L2 is 7:1 and 3:1 respectively, with Sunderland pushing the L1 ration to 15:1
  3. An attendance ratio of 11:1 and 7:1 for L1 & L2 between the top and bottom clubs in 2019/20
  4. Wage and income growth for clubs has been closely correlated and stable at around 4% for both
  5. Lack of financial transparency means it is difficult to identify the true cost of player wages (personally I think forcing clubs to include a separate line in their accounts for player wages is something that would help accountability and highlight potential over spending in poorly run clubs).
  6. Only 71% of L1 clubs and 29% of L2 clubs produced full accounts for 2018/19. None disclosed salary costs.
  7. Other sports have taken between 11 and 25 months to impose similar regimes
The conclusion has 5 points, but boils down to 'you need to take more time and do proper due diligence (with a robust monitoring structure) before you implement anything'.
 
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The PFA document holds a few gems including...

There is no evidence... of how the the regulations (salary cap) will aid future financial sustainability.

They apparently need a fancy financial modelling exercise to be done to see if paying players less would save clubs money.

Can anyone help them? I’m on tenterhooks.
 
cherryexile said:
The full document from the PFA is well worth looking at,

https://www.thepfa.com/-/media/Files/PFA---EFL-Salary-Cap-Proposals.pdf?la=en

In particular a few stats that stand out,

  1. A nice graph showing wages to revenue ratios for L1 & L2 over the last 10 years (77% - 94% for L1 and 69% - 78% for L2; both rising recently)
  2. The average ratio between income for the top and bottom clubs over the last 5 years in L1 and L2 is 7:1 and 3:1 respectively, with Sunderland pushing the L1 ration to 15:1
  3. An attendance ratio of 11:1 and 7:1 for L1 & L2 between the top and bottom clubs in 2019/20
  4. Wage and income growth for clubs has been closely correlated and stable at around 4% for both
  5. Lack of financial transparency means it is difficult to identify the true cost of player wages (personally I think forcing clubs to include a separate line in their accounts for player wages is something
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Nice analogies although I think appointing Deloitte was not the best decision as there credibility stock is not high at present due to recent fines they have received.

https://www.consultancy.uk/news/217...professional services,its role in the scandal.
 
SalfordImp said:
Nice analogies although I think appointing Deloitte was not the best decision as there credibility stock is not high at present due to recent fines they have received.

https://www.consultancy.uk/news/21773/frc-fines-deloitte-4-million-over-serco-tagging-scandal#:~:text=Deloitte has been hit with,Geografix in 2011 and 2012.&text=Now, Big Four professional services,its role in the scandal.
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I'd forgotten about the electronic tagging scandal. This line made me smile,

"Serco ... agreed a £70 million settlement with the MoJ ... in 2013, after the firm was hit with allegations of charging for tagging people who were dead, jailed, or were no longer in the UK, alongside fellow outsourcer G4S. "

I wonder if football clubs need to check that they aren't paying wages to players in similar situations?
 
Spilsby52 said:
I'm not sure how the PFA could legally challenge it unless I've got how this proposal works totally wrong. The cap is not limiting an individual but just how much the club spends as a whole, obviously that does eventually put a top limit on players but that is really down to how the clubs spreads it's funds up to the cap not a hard limit.
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This, and that's a very important point. It's not about individual wages, it's called a salary cap, not a wage cap.

If a Club wants to go and spend £10k/week on a player, then they still can.
 
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