Player Wages

[Badger 2,405]

We get a lot of "very informed" people stating as a matter of fact that we pay very low wages - without any reference to the accounts! 

Kieran Maguire (The Price of Football) has just tweeted the following breakdown of wages in the Championship last season. Last year in the Championship, out average wage was £31,000 - obviously some will be on significantly more. This was the second highest in the Championship, after Watford who were a few hundred more.

It is reasonable to assume that this will have risen very significantly this season and the average will be over £40,000 per week, despite the ridiculous £20,000 pw ceiling that some quoted. Just thought I'd bring a fact to the debate. Again, this will be an average figure and some will be on a lot more than this.

[cambridgeshire canary 6,720]

Take this with a pinch of salt. Or a spoonfull. Guess it deends on how much you like salt..

[hogesar 9,674]

3 minutes ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

Take this with a pinch of salt. Or a spoonfull. Guess it deends on how much you like salt..

We already know Pukki is on over £50k per week, so assume the rest of that list is horribly wrong too.

[hogesar 9,674]

43 minutes ago, Badger said:

We get a lot of "very informed" people stating as a matter of fact that we pay very low wages - without any reference to the accounts! 

Kieran Maguire (The Price of Football) has just tweeted the following breakdown of wages in the Championship last season. Last year in the Championship, out average wage was £31,000 - obviously some will be on significantly more. This was the second highest in the Championship, after Watford who were a few hundred more.

It is reasonable to assume that this will have risen very significantly this season and the average will be over £40,000 per week, despite the ridiculous £20,000 pw ceiling that some quoted. Just thought I'd bring a fact to the debate. Again, this will be an average figure and some will be on a lot more than this.

Thanks Badger.

Also shows how fantastically well the likes of Luton, Huddersfield, Millwall etc are doing to be in promotion contention, assuming their wages haven't significantly changed.

[dylanisabaddog 4,921]

3 minutes ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

Take this with a pinch of salt. Or a spoonfull. Guess it deends on how much you like salt..

This has been shared on here before. Quite simply it's wrong. If you add up the figures they come to nowhere near the total figures in the accounts. 

 

[Thumbbass 319]

3 minutes ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

Take this with a pinch of salt. Or a spoonfull. Guess it deends on how much you like salt..

That's a hell of a pinch of salt required. Ben Marshall hasn't been on our books since 2019.

[dylanisabaddog 4,921]

Just now, Thumbbass said:

That's a hell of a pinch of salt required. Ben Marshall hasn't been on our books since 2019.

When he signed for us the Millwall manager said they had offered him £8k a week to stay but Norwich offered double that

[hogesar 9,674]

@Badger Another interesting point in relation to this is Emi Buendia.

The claims from some being our unwillingness to pay competitive wages is what cost us him being here this season. 

With us knowing Pukki being on approx 60k pw, we certainly wouldn't have been far off what Villa are rumoured to be paying him.

 

[komakino 272]

Norwich traditionally have paid very high wages by Championship standards, so this is nothing new. 

 

[cambridgeshire canary 6,720]

14 minutes ago, hogesar said:

@Badger Another interesting point in relation to this is Emi Buendia.

The claims from some being our unwillingness to pay competitive wages is what cost us him being here this season. 

With us knowing Pukki being on approx 60k pw, we certainly wouldn't have been far off what Villa are rumoured to be paying him.

 

Or prehaps it's the time Emi walked into Webbers office and told him he never wants to play for us again.

[shefcanary 2,409]

19 minutes ago, komakino said:

Norwich traditionally have paid very high wages by Championship standards, so this is nothing new. 

 

Only 'cos of those bloody awful parachute payments we cheat on to get! 😉 

[NewNestCarrow 191]

1 minute ago, komakino said:

Norwich traditionally have paid very high wages by Championship standards, so this is nothing new. 

 

As Badger said, there are many posters on here (and non-posting fans) who fail to realise this.  This is where the vast majority of the money goes!

Here's an interesting comparison:

Huddersfield finished bottom of the PL while paying £64,175,649 in Staff Costs.

Sheff Utd finished bottom of the PL while paying £61,750,000 (est due to 11-month accounting-period) in Staff Costs.

Norwich finished bottom of the PL season (19/20) and paid £82,084,000 (est due to 13-month accounting-period) in Staff Costs. 

 

 

[hertfordyellow 460]

I would like to know where he got the data from. Do accounts give an average wage? Is he just dividing yearly wage by week and then dividing by number of player he think is in the squad. Do accounts break down bonuses from these costs? Where is it in our own reports? https://files.canaries.co.uk/canaries/annual2021.pdf 

I would treat this with a pinch of salt. Unless the accuracy of the data can be verified.

[Son Ova Gunn 165]

Trying to deduce average player wages from club accounts is like herding spiders, completely pointless. Without detailed information regarding what’s included and not included in the ‘staff costs’, without knowing if any creative genius has gone into the accounts to minimise tax etc it’s never going to give any better indication that the media stories that come out during transfer windows. Emi doubled his money on a 80k deal according to many sources. If our best player was on £40k it’s not good, either for retaining players or attracting the right ones. If he wasn’t our highest earner then Webber dropped the ball, big time. If people want to make the current set up look better, then taking away the excuse of being unbelievably poor it does the opposite as it’s the one excuse they do actually have!

Edited April 12, 2022 by Son Ova Gunn

[chicken 2,625]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

We get a lot of "very informed" people stating as a matter of fact that we pay very low wages - without any reference to the accounts! 

Kieran Maguire (The Price of Football) has just tweeted the following breakdown of wages in the Championship last season. Last year in the Championship, out average wage was £31,000 - obviously some will be on significantly more. This was the second highest in the Championship, after Watford who were a few hundred more.

It is reasonable to assume that this will have risen very significantly this season and the average will be over £40,000 per week, despite the ridiculous £20,000 pw ceiling that some quoted. Just thought I'd bring a fact to the debate. Again, this will be an average figure and some will be on a lot more than this.

What I like about this is how it shows that the clubs that have just been relegated are using the parachute payments as intended, but that over time those teams who are unable to bounce straight back, cut their cloth as the parachute payments reduce.

Also goes to show just how competitive the Championship is. And how competitive Norwich are. Sandwiched there between two clubs who have literally thrown money at their squads and doing no better, with wealthier owners also helping to subsidise wages and player fees etc.

For those saying we know Pukki is over £50k... two sources in the press have said that, one has suggested it is closer to £60k and that is for the one year extension. That may well not be what he is on now. It is almost certainly not what he was on last season. The same as I'd be surprised if Williams is on that amount at Man Utd, and if he is, whether we are paying that entire wage. 

[NewNestCarrow 191]

30 minutes ago, hogesar said:

@Badger Another interesting point in relation to this is Emi Buendia.

The claims from some being our unwillingness to pay competitive wages is what cost us him being here this season. 

With us knowing Pukki being on approx 60k pw, we certainly wouldn't have been far off what Villa are rumoured to be paying him.

 

Why would a 23 yr-old, non-international signed from the Spanish second tier be on anywhere near the same money as a 29 -year-old with 70 caps and top-flight experience in Germany & Scotland & European competitions and who was signed on a Bosman (where the absence of a transfer fee is reflected in a higher wage)?

Experience & leadership mean a lot in football, and I would think that Pukki, Hanley, Krul, Drmic & Byram were bigger earners than Emi. 

[Badger 2,405]

1 hour ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

Take this with a pinch of salt. Or a spoonfull. Guess it deends on how much you like salt..

Sorry CC but this is total nonsense. If you total it up it accounts for about t a quarter of the wage bill.

[Badger 2,405]

23 minutes ago, hertfordyellow said:

I would like to know where he got the data from. Do accounts give an average wage? Is he just dividing yearly wage by week and then dividing by number of player he think is in the squad. Do accounts break down bonuses from these costs? Where is it in our own reports? https://files.canaries.co.uk/canaries/annual2021.pdf 

I would treat this with a pinch of salt. Unless the accuracy of the data can be verified.

Maguire will have obtained it form the all clubs statutory accounts. He does an analysis of all clubs accounts as they are published and uses them to produce comparative analysis. Most follow a similar format.

The figures in NCFC's accounts is on page 27 which gives total staff costs as £66.6 million.

Whilst I am sure you are right to be sceptical of much that is published Kieran Maguire is the acknowledged expert on football finance in the UK and is the media's go-to academic on all football - for example, he is currently on the Bloomberg panel looking at Chelsea's ownership. He is not a journalist but a senior lecturer in accountancy at Liverpool University. His whole reputation is based upon football finance so he is unlikely to make the claims casually

[Petriix 2,835]

As I understand it, the total wage budget in the accounts includes all the bonuses paid. I believe we structure our player and management staff wages such that basic salaries are low but bonuses are high. So, on promotion, our overall wages look pretty high, but the exposure to risk is low because the extra outlay is contingent on the guaranteed additional income from the following season.

None of this is broken down separately in the accounts. Indeed, there is only one figure for 'wages' of around £54M from 2020-21. That includes all 332 employees of the club. If we assume that £45M relates to player remuneration and that the bulk of that is shared between the 20 first team regulars, an average of £2M each would be £38.4K per week. But it's pretty difficult to know what proportion of that would be bonuses. It wouldn't surprise me at all if our best paid players in the Championship were on £40k per week basic salary.

We obviously have no idea who is included in that £30k average, or indeed how accurate it is.

Remember too that this was a squad only just relegated and therefore covered by parachute payments. We don't know the details of contracts, but it's likely that relegation reductions are linked to turnover. You can also imagine that our 2019-20 wages would have also had significant bonuses due on avoiding relegation - which obviously weren't payable. So, while the difference between the two seasons appears lower than expected, it could easily be explained by the contrasting success on the pitch.

[Badger 2,405]

37 minutes ago, Son Ova Gunn said:

Emi doubled his money on a 80k deal according to many sources.

Which sources?

[Google Bot 3,278]

3 minutes ago, Badger said:

Which sources?

Michael Bailey

https://theathletic.com/2639341/2021/06/09/why-villa-are-spending-big-on-buendia-goalscorer-outstanding-chance-creator-and-workaholic/

"Buendia’s £15,000-per-week Championship salary would have risen to £35,000 with Norwich back in the Premier League. With Villa, however, he will now be earning £80,000 a week."

Edited April 12, 2022 by Google Bot

[hertfordyellow 460]

28 minutes ago, Badger said:

Maguire will have obtained it form the all clubs statutory accounts. He does an analysis of all clubs accounts as they are published and uses them to produce comparative analysis. Most follow a similar format.

The figures in NCFC's accounts is on page 27 which gives total staff costs as £66.6 million.

Whilst I am sure you are right to be sceptical of much that is published Kieran Maguire is the acknowledged expert on football finance in the UK and is the media's go-to academic on all football - for example, he is currently on the Bloomberg panel looking at Chelsea's ownership. He is not a journalist but a senior lecturer in accountancy at Liverpool University. His whole reputation is based upon football finance so he is unlikely to make the claims casually

Total staff costs. If he had any integrity as a academic, he would either point to his model to gauge these figures or elude to the unscientific nature of them if based on total staff costs. This is the mirror red top, not an academic journal. I wouldn’t pin your hopes too much on how much he is staking his reputation on it.

Edit: not sure why I thought he printed this in the mirror. Ignore that but.

Edited April 12, 2022 by hertfordyellow

[Badger 2,405]

3 minutes ago, Petriix said:

As I understand it, the total wage budget in the accounts includes all the bonuses paid... the exposure to risk is low because the extra outlay is contingent on the guaranteed additional income from the following season.

Yes, it will include bonuses, as indeed will the figures for Watford and Brentford.

... But it's pretty difficult to know what proportion of that would be bonuses. It wouldn't surprise me at all if our best paid players in the Championship were on £40k per week basic salary.

It was rumoured before that promotion bonuses were iro of £10 million, but there is no verifiable source for this as far as I am aware - only journalists.

We obviously have no idea who is included in that £30k average, or indeed how accurate it is.

On the basis of what we have seen in the accounts, the £30,000 per week figures looks to be pretty accurate. Obviously, we have no breakdown on who got what, although we might make reasonable suppositions - Pukki higher than average, Idah lower etc.

Remember too that this was a squad only just relegated and therefore covered by parachute payments. We don't know the details of contracts, but it's likely that relegation reductions are linked to turnover. You can also imagine that our 2019-20 wages would have also had significant bonuses due on avoiding relegation - which obviously weren't payable. So, while the difference between the two seasons appears lower than expected, it could easily be explained by the contrasting success on the pitch.

Yes - agree. Our wages would have been lower if we had not been promoted and they would have been higher the year before if we had stayed up.

 

[Badger 2,405]

7 minutes ago, Google Bot said:

Michael Bailey

https://theathletic.com/2639341/2021/06/09/why-villa-are-spending-big-on-buendia-goalscorer-outstanding-chance-creator-and-workaholic/

"Buendia’s £15,000-per-week Championship salary would have risen to £35,000 with Norwich back in the Premier League. With Villa, however, he will now be earning £80,000 a week."

Could be reliable - who knows? The club would be in breech of convention/ privacy etc if it released details on an individual player's payment and I can't see what they would gain from it but that doesn't mean it is untrue - we simply do not know.

We do know total staff costs and wage bills etc from the accounts.

[Google Bot 3,278]

11 minutes ago, Badger said:

Could be reliable - who knows?

It's very rare that Bailey would put his name to something unreliable.  But of course, there's two names on that article. 🙂

The issue with the club is not about average wages anyway - it's not paying key players their going rate. Average pay is good for average players - and that's part of the problem we have with the bloat here.

Plus most of these public figures are based on the season previous, a club who's up and down the divisions is never going to be easy to publish reliable data on.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Google Bot

[Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man 3,821]

28 minutes ago, Google Bot said:

Michael Bailey

https://theathletic.com/2639341/2021/06/09/why-villa-are-spending-big-on-buendia-goalscorer-outstanding-chance-creator-and-workaholic/

"Buendia’s £15,000-per-week Championship salary would have risen to £35,000 with Norwich back in the Premier League. With Villa, however, he will now be earning £80,000 a week."

So if our average weekly wage was £31k last season, how the hell was Buendia only earning £15k? 

I'm taking pretty much every statistic quoted in this thread with a pinch of salt. They vary wildly, with some figures seeming too low and others too high. 

[NewNestCarrow 191]

30 minutes ago, Badger said:

Maguire will have obtained it form the all clubs statutory accounts. He does an analysis of all clubs accounts as they are published and uses them to produce comparative analysis. Most follow a similar format.

The figures in NCFC's accounts is on page 27 which gives total staff costs as £66.6 million.

Whilst I am sure you are right to be sceptical of much that is published Kieran Maguire is the acknowledged expert on football finance in the UK and is the media's go-to academic on all football - for example, he is currently on the Bloomberg panel looking at Chelsea's ownership. He is not a journalist but a senior lecturer in accountancy at Liverpool University. His whole reputation is based upon football finance so he is unlikely to make the claims casually

Kieran Maguire is very good and has found himself a very comfortable niche but, I can guarantee you, there are multiple occasions when he claims to be knowledgeable on something when he most definitely is not!

There is no figure in the NC accounts that allows him to calculate an Average Weekly  Wage.  There used to be a bit of a hint (post-Chase openness saw them publish a "% of all costs for football dept") but that was discontinued after 2018/19.

I expect that the club will argue that they need to keep such figures confidential, as if most football agents don't have a pretty good idea of what most players earn!

[Badger 2,405]

11 minutes ago, hertfordyellow said:

Total staff costs. If he had any integrity as a academic, he would either point to his model to gauge these figures or elude to the unscientific nature of them if based on total staff costs. This is the mirror red top, not an academic journal. I wouldn’t pin your hopes too much on how much he is staking his reputation on it.

I welcome scepticism about figures Hertford because a lot of what people say is nonsense but Maguire is the acknowledged expert in the field of football finance. He has sufficient credibility to be quoted in the FT, The Times, the BBC and most national and local newspapers.

He was also called to give evidence to the House of Commons to give oral evidence to MPs of the Digital, Cultural, Media and Sports Committee. He was described by the MPs of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Football Supporters as a "football finance expert."

He is an academic not a journalist and has a book examining football finance - "The Price of Football." His academic reputation is sufficient for him to be invited to lecture at other universities. It would be very damaging to his reputation to be found to be talking nonsense. If you were going to trust any individual on football finance, I think he would have to be close to the top of your list.

 

https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/1318/html/

https://www.ft.com/content/9c665caa-23ee-4255-9e8c-09b82cacd5fc

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/crisis-deepens-for-everton-as-they-face-biggest-financial-losses-in-english-football-w7p9r2hdp

https://www.westminster.ac.uk/events/the-football-business-current-issues-in-finance-transfers-and-contracts

[Google Bot 3,278]

8 minutes ago, Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man said:

So if our average weekly wage was £31k last season, how the hell was Buendia only earning £15k? 

While I agree with your sentiment, the reason is because it's based on the terms of the contract agreed, which in turn is based on the financial budget of the club.  I think his last signature was in the prem league?  So must've been on around 7-8k before that.   And then a relegation clause written in to his final contract(?).

You can only presume he wanted out at the start of last season than agreeing to a revision/extension of contract.  From the clubs perspective they've gone 8k,15k to 35k in a period of 3 years - So, Maybe they saw that as generous?

Edited April 12, 2022 by Google Bot

[Badger 2,405]

14 minutes ago, Google Bot said:

It's very rare that Bailey would put his name to something unreliable.  But of course, there's two names on that article. 🙂

Like you, I would have thought that Bailey was reliable. However, the £15,000 figure he quotes for his championship wages seems pretty unlikely.

Truth is we don't know what individuals are on: we know the total wages and are able to make an approximate but pretty reliable calculation of average wage but we know nothing about individual wage amounts.