Edin Rahic: It's Not Personal

If the wage budget has been reduced I'm not sure it’s for the reasons you think. City supposedly have the 7th highest salary spend in the league, it’s no where near Sunderland whose current wage bill apparently puts them at almost £10mill a year which is over double the next highest but it’s also not exactly chump change.

I would imagine the biggest issue is FPP. You can spend 60% of your weekly turnover on wages excluding any home grown players under 21 who are exempt. Using the figures I’ve seen the players who count toward it account for about 55k a week. Based on past figures that have been mentioned by club officials your yearly turnover yoyo's between £4.5mill and £7mill. At the lowest figure that’s about £86.5k a week so 60% of that is a FPP cap of £51k. At the highest figure the FPP cap is £80k. If you take the middle of the two that gives a FP wage cap of £65k a week. So if they could guarentee a big sale or a cup run then there is loads in the FPP budget, if they don’t then the budget is fairy tight to a point where if they hit the low end revenue figure they already be paying too much. That’s the problem, even if Rupp is willing to put his hand in his pocket unless he pulled a Man City and doped their financials there may just not be the budget available at League One levels to build the team they would like.

 

A lot of the 'extra' players are exempt. Riley, Miller, Lewis O'Brien, Robinson for example are decent earners who are exempt. Your squad looks bigger as you got rid of the u23's but then most who would play in the u23's are obviously exempt

 

Perhaps a similar mind set to people who buy 10 lottery tickets rather than one. They think that by having so many, their chance of getting a winner must increase.
The Premiership teams have developed their take up of young players akin to fishermen. Gone are the days when you could do reasoanably well with a Yorkshire ‘Pebble’, think ‘Factory Ships’! The top clubs take youngsters from round the globe. The philosophy at City, seems to be do a secondary catch, i.e. the ‘throwbacks’ which the Premiership clubs feel do not warrant a place in their controlled volume of catch, and are deemed surplus, may become the next Jamie Vardy! Very wishful thinking.

 

Are you sure as that wouldn’t be Turnover rather investment. The EFL rules are fully on ensuring that wage spending is in a safe percentage range of turnover to limit the chances of wage inflation causing clubs to go bust (unlike UEFA's rules which are profit based)

 

If you can spend 60% of your weekly turnover on wages, then in FFP terms where does that fit in with ‘parachute’ money such as Sunderland, and clubs which in simple terms appear to punch very high given disproportionately wealthy owners, such as Fleetwood and Scunthorpe?

 

Parachute payments are considered revenue so they are included. It's why Sunderland are able to get away with spending almost £10mill a year in wages (their attendances also obviously help too) while no-one else even breaks the £5mill mark.

Sunderland are also helped by the fact that there is additional help for clubs relegated in that any player whose contracts were for 3 years or greater when relegated from the championship is exempt from the calculation just like u21 HG players

 

Just looked it up and apparently Rupp can inject money and it is counted as turnover BUT only as a donation. When you consider every million donated only gets them £11k more wage budget which is two top League 1 players that's a pretty steep donation required

 

They don't have to come through the clubs own system to be exempt. They just need to meet the homegrown criteria. That page just seems to give the most common example of a player at this level these days who qualifies as most would have come through your own system as those higher up aren't generally releasing players pre-being 21 these days

 

There are plenty of resources out there where wages of players get mentioned. Obviously, they will never be 100% accurate but when multiple sources have them in a ballpark you can hazard a fair guess its around that.

When push comes to shove as well if you want a quick way to get a basic idea of wages a club is paying loading up Football Manager with the default database is never a bad start. The researchers for each club have contacts in both the clubs and the media (and often the agents) so they have multiple well-informed sources that allow them to take a pretty decent stab at wages

Everything seems to have Riley on the north of £2k a week. Miller is apparently on £1.5k a week at Boro and O'Brien is on about £1k at Huddersfield. Both of which you are contributing the full amount.