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cambridgeshire canary

Great news- Championship salary cap to be rejected!

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I'm all for a regime of financial sanity being imposed on football clubs, but making the salary cap the same SET figure for every club just seems like nonsense. 

The idea of a club only being allowed to spend a limited percentage of it's revenue on wages is surely the right way to go. What needs to happen is that the EFL sorts out its corporate governance and actually gets a regime in place where each club's spending is properly monitored and that teams who take the p*ss (yes you Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday) get ruthlessly clamped down on.  (sigh......... there's a pig flying past my window).

 

Edited by Thirsty Lizard
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38 minutes ago, Thirsty Lizard said:

I'm all for a regime of financial sanity being imposed on football clubs, but making the salary cap the same SET figure for every club just seems like nonsense. 

The idea of a club only being allowed to spend a limited percentage of it's revenue on wages is surely the right way to go. What needs to happen is that the EFL sorts out its corporate governance and actually gets a regime in place where each club's spending is properly monitored and that teams who take the p*ss (yes you Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday) get ruthlessly clamped down on.  (sigh......... there's a pig flying past my window).

 

Yes it would be unfair for clubs relegated from the EPL, and given parachute payments, to be restricted just as it would be to restrict ownership.

But there has to be wage caps. Whether individually or total is a question for debate.

 

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The key thing here is, when a club gets relegated from EPL with players on big salaries, how do you reconcile employment law to a salary cap!  Only by including clauses in contracts that players sign up to.  And they would only sign up to them if there were escape clauses, if they agreed to sign in the first place.  In this regard, a salary cap based on absolute financial figures has already bolted through the gate.  Still I'm sure the new Business Secretary can ensure such problems go away in his review of post-Brexit employment law.

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Just withdraw parachute payments. An unnecessary insurance policy to safeguard against overspending funds you don't have or can't generate from investors. 

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Salary caps only work if everyone is following them, the Premier League included. 

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14 minutes ago, Haus said:

Salary caps only work if everyone is following them, the Premier League included. 

Indeed, and that’s a turkey/ Xmas situation as the PL is basically premised  around using piles of  TV cash to steal talent from every other league on the planet.

One thing’s for sure, if and when they introduce a salary cap (and I expect they’ll be shamed into it eventually) , it will be set meaninglessly high.

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3 minutes ago, GenerationA47 said:

Indeed, and that’s a turkey/ Xmas situation as the PL is basically premised  around using piles of  TV cash to steal talent from every other league on the planet.

One thing’s for sure, if and when they introduce a salary cap (and I expect they’ll be shamed into it eventually) , it will be set meaninglessly high.

Even then it'd really  need to be set across the top European leagues - maybe a requirement for entry to the Champions League.  

This is why I dont think it will ever happen.

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33 minutes ago, Capt. Pants said:

Just withdraw parachute payments. An unnecessary insurance policy to safeguard against overspending funds you don't have or can't generate from investors. 

Totally disagree. The financial chasm between the Premier League and the EPL is so huge that any club being promoted to the Premier League would effectively be unable to sign any players of remotely near PL standard. To protect themselves a club would have to put clauses in a player's contract massively cutting their salary if that club were relegated. Any player of Premier League quality would simply refuse to sign such a contract and go to an established PL club or one of the other big European leagues instead. 

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Personally I think its bad news. Tying it to tunrover just makes it impossible for smaller clubs to compete. 

Lets say we give teams 70% of turnover as a wage cap. A quick google suggests that would mean Luton limited to a wage budget of just under £6m, while us (turnover of about £33m without parachute payments) would be able to spend £23m on wages- so basically 4 times as much.

How is that fair?

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1 minute ago, Haus said:

Even then it'd really  need to be set across the top European leagues - maybe a requirement for entry to the Champions League.  

This is why I dont think it will ever happen.

Yes, was going to add it would need to be coordinated in that way.

I do think it could happen if Uefa and a critical mass of the top FAs chose  to make a break from this upward spiral at the top, and the ‘equal and opposite reaction’ of the downward spiral at the bottom end. That though will take a lot more League clubs folding across England and the continent , and lower leagues being threatened, than has happened so far.

 Long term,  there’s no benefit to the vast majority of top level clubs of having completely unlimited wages. They obviously outbid poorer teams but can always be outbid in turn. Once they realise they will never compete with the top 10 billionaire franchises in the region. Even the top ten will still typically get their targets under a wage cap, through their reputation and better support staff and facilities

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43 minutes ago, Haus said:

Salary caps only work if everyone is following them, the Premier League included. 

Which will never happen, they only want the lower leauges to suffer and for nobody to be able to come up and challenge the top Prem teams monopoly on money.

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30 minutes ago, Thirsty Lizard said:

Totally disagree. The financial chasm between the Premier League and the EPL is so huge that any club being promoted to the Premier League would effectively be unable to sign any players of remotely near PL standard. To protect themselves a club would have to put clauses in a player's contract massively cutting their salary if that club were relegated. Any player of Premier League quality would simply refuse to sign such a contract and go to an established PL club or one of the other big European leagues instead. 

The elephant in the room is you won't be able to sort out finances long term without tackling the obscene inflation in player wages. Championship players are, at some point, going to have to accept that their wages need to come down in line with clubs actual turnover. We've got over 50% of clubs in the Championship spending more than they bring in on wages alone. So players are likely going to have to get used to the idea that they either don't play in the Premier League or they take a wage cut to play in the Championship.

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8 minutes ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

Which will never happen, they only want the lower leauges to suffer and for nobody to be able to come up and challenge the top Prem teams monopoly on money.

So we just let the gap get wider?

There is nothing can be done to stop wealthy owners buying the clubs, whichever way they finance it, ie Burnley.

But I could see 14 of the present EPL voting in the same way as they voted against 5 subs. The reason given for voting against that was because it gave the bigger clubs an advantage.

I don't see the rest of Europe following is a necessity. I am sure there are plenty of decent players in Europe who would come to play in the EPL without demanding stupid wages. 

And if they don't arrive in droves like present, so what? It would give British lads a chance.

Other codes have managed it because it was necessary for their respective sports. I am fed up with a cartel of foreign owners dictating how the rest of football survives.

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46 minutes ago, king canary said:

Personally I think its bad news. Tying it to tunrover just makes it impossible for smaller clubs to compete. 

Lets say we give teams 70% of turnover as a wage cap. A quick google suggests that would mean Luton limited to a wage budget of just under £6m, while us (turnover of about £33m without parachute payments) would be able to spend £23m on wages- so basically 4 times as much.

How is that fair?

The disparity you mention is FAR, FAR LESS than the disparity we were faced with in the Premier League last season.  For example, there was that meme that went about when we beat Man City that our total squad cost about £12 million whereas their squad cost £797 million!!  The elephant in the room is the HUGE FINANCIAL CHASM between the Premier League and the Championship. As I said - for a yoyo team like us we could absolutely and totally kiss goodbye forever to any notion of being able to stay up in the Premier League if we were to get promoted if there was a fixed salary cap in the Championship. As long as the huge financial chasm between the Championship and the Premier League exists parachute payments are a necessary sticking plaster (and yes, they do nothing to cure the massive underlying wound). 

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16 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

So we just let the gap get wider?

There is nothing can be done to stop wealthy owners buying the clubs, whichever way they finance it, ie Burnley.

But I could see 14 of the present EPL voting in the same way as they voted against 5 subs. The reason given for voting against that was because it gave the bigger clubs an advantage.

I don't see the rest of Europe following is a necessity. I am sure there are plenty of decent players in Europe who would come to play in the EPL without demanding stupid wages. 

And if they don't arrive in droves like present, so what? It would give British lads a chance.

Other codes have managed it because it was necessary for their respective sports. I am fed up with a cartel of foreign owners dictating how the rest of football survives.

It'd mean all the best players disappearing to Spain and Italy.   It'd make the Premier League a worse product and a second rate league. 

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21 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

So we just let the gap get wider?

There is nothing can be done to stop wealthy owners buying the clubs, whichever way they finance it, ie Burnley.

But I could see 14 of the present EPL voting in the same way as they voted against 5 subs. The reason given for voting against that was because it gave the bigger clubs an advantage.

I don't see the rest of Europe following is a necessity. I am sure there are plenty of decent players in Europe who would come to play in the EPL without demanding stupid wages. 

And if they don't arrive in droves like present, so what? It would give British lads a chance.

Other codes have managed it because it was necessary for their respective sports. I am fed up with a cartel of foreign owners dictating how the rest of football survives.

Foreign owners like Tottenham's Joe Lewis you mean? You know, the cockney billionaire who lives on a £112 million yacht in The Bahamas? Or maybe you're talking about David Sullivan and David Gold at West Ham?  It's a cartel of super rich owners,

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4 minutes ago, Thirsty Lizard said:

The disparity you mention is FAR, FAR LESS than the disparity we were faced with in the Premier League last season.  For example, there was that meme that went about when we beat Man City that our total squad cost about £12 million whereas their squad cost £797 million!!  The elephant in the room is the HUGE FINANCIAL CHASM between the Premier League and the Championship. As I said - for a yoyo team like us we could absolutely and totally kiss goodbye forever to any notion of being able to stay up in the Premier League if we were to get promoted if there was a fixed salary cap in the Championship. As long as the huge financial chasm between the Championship and the Premier League exists parachute payments are a necessary sticking plaster (and yes, they do nothing to cure the massive underlying wound). 

No, you're talking about transfer fees, I'm talking about wages.

According to Swiss Ramble our wage budget last season was £89m, Man City had the highest with £315m. Big disparity but not 4 times as much (getting close though).

The problem is further exacerbated by being pro keeping parachute payments. Teams turnover with Parachute payments is generally around £70m, so 70% wage budget would allow clubs like to spend about £50m a year on wages-  nearly 10 times the amount Luton would be able to spend, far outweighing any wage budget disparity currently happening in the Premier League.

So from our perspective a turnover cap is likely great news but it would make this league even less competitive than the Premier League for many further down the chain and would likely make the chances of the same clubs bouncing up and down from league to league.

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1 hour ago, Thirsty Lizard said:

Totally disagree. The financial chasm between the Premier League and the EPL is so huge that any club being promoted to the Premier League would effectively be unable to sign any players of remotely near PL standard. To protect themselves a club would have to put clauses in a player's contract massively cutting their salary if that club were relegated. Any player of Premier League quality would simply refuse to sign such a contract and go to an established PL club or one of the other big European leagues instead. 

Exactly.

The idea of a salary cap is ridiculous. Imagine if the government tried to put salary caps with regards how much a company can pay it's employees, or a movie production company was told how much they are allowed to pay the actors who star in their films?

Everybody should be paid what they are worth in respect to how much the market place is able to afford to pay. 

Football is fundamentally a business of entertainment. They should be treated as any other business. If a club operates with a poor business model and makes poor business decisions, then they only have themselves to blame when it falls into ruin.

I for one am worried when the day comes that Webber and Farke move on. I truly believe that NCFC is one of the best run clubs in the country and I give most of the credit to them. The business model and attitude they have put in place is second to none. Why should such a well run club as ours be subjected to the restrictions brought about by other clubs making unsound business decisions?

 

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27 minutes ago, king canary said:

No, you're talking about transfer fees, I'm talking about wages.

According to Swiss Ramble our wage budget last season was £89m, Man City had the highest with £315m. Big disparity but not 4 times as much (getting close though).

The problem is further exacerbated by being pro keeping parachute payments. Teams turnover with Parachute payments is generally around £70m, so 70% wage budget would allow clubs like to spend about £50m a year on wages-  nearly 10 times the amount Luton would be able to spend, far outweighing any wage budget disparity currently happening in the Premier League.

So from our perspective a turnover cap is likely great news but it would make this league even less competitive than the Premier League for many further down the chain and would likely make the chances of the same clubs bouncing up and down from league to league.

But you're totally missing out the reason why parachute payments were introduced in the first place. They are to cushion the impact on teams relegated from the Premier League who are saddled with huge wages (wages which they had to agree to pay to even stand a chance of attracting players vaguely of Premier League quality in the first place). Suddenly reduced to Championship levels of income they wouldn't stand a chance of being able to pay those players and would either go bankrupt trying to pay those wages or lose those players for nothing. Ironically, one of the major protagonists of parachute payments was ex Ipswich chairman David Sheepshanks, for the very reasons I've mentioned above. Until (maybe) this season it has always been the case that teams relegated from the Premier League have had a far greater chance of plummeting through the divisions than they have of being promoted back to the Premier League (and that is even though they have had the safety net of parachute payments).

It is also kind of ironic that you have suddenly started talking about wages when you've historically been one of the main proponents on here of Norwich spending more on transfer fees  when we were in the Premier League last season. Perhaps the fact that our wage budget in the Premier League was £89 million proves that the club were far more ambitious last season than you have ever given them credit for. 

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6 minutes ago, CirclePoint said:

Exactly.

The idea of a salary cap is ridiculous. Imagine if the government tried to put salary caps with regards how much a company can pay it's employees, or a movie production company was told how much they are allowed to pay the actors who star in their films?

Everybody should be paid what they are worth in respect to how much the market place is able to afford to pay. 

Football is fundamentally a business of entertainment. They should be treated as any other business. If a club operates with a poor business model and makes poor business decisions, then they only have themselves to blame when it falls into ruin.

I for one am worried when the day comes that Webber and Farke move on. I truly believe that NCFC is one of the best run clubs in the country and I give most of the credit to them. The business model and attitude they have put in place is second to none. Why should such a well run club as ours be subjected to the restrictions brought about by other clubs making unsound business decisions?

 

It wont work here for the reasons stated, but in places where it does work it is fantastic - the NFL has 32 teams and there is a much more even playing field, with the bigger teams not just able to snap everyone up.  

Every team genuinely has a chance to compete to win it. 

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2 hours ago, king canary said:

Personally I think its bad news. Tying it to tunrover just makes it impossible for smaller clubs to compete. 

Lets say we give teams 70% of turnover as a wage cap. A quick google suggests that would mean Luton limited to a wage budget of just under £6m, while us (turnover of about £33m without parachute payments) would be able to spend £23m on wages- so basically 4 times as much.

How is that fair?

Why should smaller clubs be able to compete and who said anything about fairness? It doesn't happen anywhere else, either in sport, business or wider society. 

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26 minutes ago, Thirsty Lizard said:

But you're totally missing out the reason why parachute payments were introduced in the first place. They are to cushion the impact on teams relegated from the Premier League who are saddled with huge wages (wages which they had to agree to pay to even stand a chance of attracting players vaguely of Premier League quality in the first place). Suddenly reduced to Championship levels of income they wouldn't stand a chance of being able to pay those players and would either go bankrupt trying to pay those wages or lose those players for nothing. Ironically, one of the major protagonists of parachute payments was ex Ipswich chairman David Sheepshanks, for the very reasons I've mentioned above. Until (maybe) this season it has always been the case that teams relegated from the Premier League have had a far greater chance of plummeting through the divisions than they have of being promoted back to the Premier League (and that is even though they have had the safety net of parachute payments).

It is also kind of ironic that you have suddenly started talking about wages when you've historically been one of the main proponents on here of Norwich spending more on transfer fees  when we were in the Premier League last season. Perhaps the fact that our wage budget in the Premier League was £89 million proves that the club were far more ambitious last season than you have ever given them credit for. 

I'm not missing the reason they are there, I'm perfectly aware. I agree they are needed unless players become willing to sign contracts with hefty wage cuts in them on relegation as standard. I don't think its a great system but it seems to help clubs not go bust.

You're suggestion (wages capped as a % of turnover combined with parachute payments remaining in place) is, in my opinion, the worst of both worlds. You're taking the already gaping chasm that exists between the top and bottom of the Premier League and making it even bigger in the Championship. In my opinion in would likely kill the league as a spectacle because the chances of a club who haven't got parachute payments ever competing would be even lower than it is now. Take Brentford for instance, their revenue is about £15m. Right now they can compete due to being able to spend wages well beyond that turnover, in part funded by player sales. Under your idea they'd be able to spend about 7 times less than a team like Bournemouth. I think its important that clubs like Wigan, Swansea or Blackpool can aspire to getting their time in the sun and a turnover % wage cap would likely have stopped those clubs chances of ever going up. 

The hope would be a hard salary cap might have a dragging affect on the wages of the bottom tier Premier League teams as they have to effectively plan for relegation but I do agree it would also create an environment where newly promoted teams would struggle to attract talent. I'm not suggesting it as a perfect solution (no such thing exists, the genie is likely to far out of the bottle) but in my opinion elite sport should more or less operate on a financially level playing field so each team has the same chance as any other of succeeding. Right now it doesn't and in an ideal, hypothetical world that would change.  

 

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8 minutes ago, sgncfc said:

Why should smaller clubs be able to compete and who said anything about fairness? It doesn't happen anywhere else, either in sport, business or wider society. 

Because, in my opinion, that is what sport should be all about.

It happens in plenty of sports- every single major American sport has a salary cap, Premier League Rugby has a salary cap, the whole point is to keep the playing field level. Personally, for me, that is what sport is supposed to be. I think it should be about who can assemble the best squad, which manager can get the most out of their players, which tactical innovations can a team come up with more than about which owner has the most money.

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1 hour ago, Haus said:

It'd mean all the best players disappearing to Spain and Italy.   It'd make the Premier League a worse product and a second rate league. 

Who says? And maybe an even playing field would be better for football as a whole. When a team like Norwich can finish third again.

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I don't see how there will ever be a way to resolve this. It happened because the PL was formed and broke away from the EFL. Now they are two totally different entities trying to be part of the same pyramid so everything will always be a compromise, usually with the EFL bending over...

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11 minutes ago, king canary said:

I'm not missing the reason they are there, I'm perfectly aware. I agree they are needed unless players become willing to sign contracts with hefty wage cuts in them on relegation as standard. I don't think its a great system but it seems to help clubs not go bust.

You're suggestion (wages capped as a % of turnover combined with parachute payments remaining in place) is, in my opinion, the worst of both worlds. You're taking the already gaping chasm that exists between the top and bottom of the Premier League and making it even bigger in the Championship. In my opinion in would likely kill the league as a spectacle because the chances of a club who haven't got parachute payments ever competing would be even lower than it is now. Take Brentford for instance, their revenue is about £15m. Right now they can compete due to being able to spend wages well beyond that turnover, in part funded by player sales. Under your idea they'd be able to spend about 7 times less than a team like Bournemouth. I think its important that clubs like Wigan, Swansea or Blackpool can aspire to getting their time in the sun and a turnover % wage cap would likely have stopped those clubs chances of ever going up. 

The hope would be a hard salary cap might have a dragging affect on the wages of the bottom tier Premier League teams as they have to effectively plan for relegation but I do agree it would also create an environment where newly promoted teams would struggle to attract talent. I'm not suggesting it as a perfect solution (no such thing exists, the genie is likely to far out of the bottle) but in my opinion elite sport should more or less operate on a financially level playing field so each team has the same chance as any other of succeeding. Right now it doesn't and in an ideal, hypothetical world that would change.  

 

I think we're probably in agreement on a lot more things than we differ on to be honest. I would love to see a situation where the Luton's and Rotherham's of this world could compete with teams like us on a vaguely level playing field. I would just as much like to see a situation where the Norwich City's of this world could compete with the Manchester City's and Liverpool's of this world on a vaguely level playing field. My objection to a set salary cap being introduced in the Championship is that it would achieve the former, whilst simultaneously ruling out for eternity any chance of the latter. 

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Just now, nutty nigel said:

I don't see how there will ever be a way to resolve this. It happened because the PL was formed and broke away from the EFL. Now they are two totally different entities trying to be part of the same pyramid so everything will always be a compromise, usually with the EFL bending over...

Unfortunately I think you're likely right.

It will be interesting to see if covid has some long term affects on how clubs go about their business or if once fans are back it all just snaps back to normal.

I can't see much changing without a full scale financial collapse in football. 

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1 minute ago, Thirsty Lizard said:

I think we're probably in agreement on a lot more things than we differ on to be honest. I would love to see a situation where the Luton's and Rotherham's of this world could compete with teams like us on a vaguely level playing field. I would just as much like to see a situation where the Norwich City's of this world could compete with the Manchester City's and Liverpool's of this world on a vaguely level playing field. My objection to a set salary cap being introduced in the Championship is that it would achieve the former, whilst simultaneously ruling out for eternity any chance of the latter. 

Yeah, I'm probably deeply naive but my view is salary caps are the way forward, they need to be applied across the board but it has to start somewhere and maybe the Championship is a good place for it. If FIFA or UEFA had any real control they should bring it in across the board but they don't.

I really do want a world in which local fans like Delia & MWJ can own a team, make it self funding, hire forward thinking people like Webber & Farke and be rewarded for that by being able to compete at the highest level. We're just so far away from that though.

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