...if so, apologies, but I have not seen it referenced in any of the most relevant threads.
https://salarysport.com/football/My Czech buddy (who is now a semi-Addick) pinged it to me this morning, and at first sight the figures there look pretty plausible. Whoever is behind it is, perhaps understandably, keeping themselves anonymous, although they do
have a stab at explaining their sources and methodology. The biggest problem they have with salaries in our division seems to be with loan players from FAPL clubs, (who pays what) which would explain why according to the site Ian Maadsen was our top paid player last season.
Maybe I could try to ask Kieran Maguire what he makes of it. Otherwise, as they say, fill ya' boots...
Comments
As well as the loans it also does take into account things like the deal we did with Inniss and Palace, and Williams before him, where he signed a really low salary but Palace paid up some or all of his contract to make up the difference.
I would also say 6ish million would also tie in with the 18/19 figure and what Gallen said about it being smaller, I'll try and find that interview but I haven't got time right now.
- loans are a particular problem as it looks like the data is based on the player's salary at their home club, and in this league there are a lot of young players from higher leagues on loan. But we know that the L1 clubs only pay a proportion of the salaries of these players; what we never know is what proportion. So in our case Ian Maatsen comes out as our highest-paid player but we can be sure that we did not pay even half of that. This issue has completely distorted Fleetwood's figures as they had three very highly paid players on loan.
- the data includes all players on any kind of professional contract, it seems, so I think that in Charlton's case the figures are inflated by having a relatively large pool of young players. The average number of players by club listed is 47 but in our case it is listed as 64..
So those are obvious barriers to accuracy, leaving aside the big question of how on earth these people could get hold of precise salary figures for all footballers – and by the way they are doing this across quite a few big countries. However since in League One most clubs will have a similar make up of squad, including loan players, and changes in January, I think it is safe to use this as a good guide to a club's budget relative to the others in the league. So let's assume that overall this gives a good guide; Thomas will have received the EFL version, and he's entitled to say to himself okay, last year we were the third highest spender and we only finished 7th. He might then say, okay I'm committed to keeping a large squad of young players for development; however all the talk is that Covid messed with clubs' finances, so a budget which puts us once again in the top 6 ought to be enough to build a competitive squad. From that you might conclude that they have set a budget around £5 mil; and my opinion would be that these figures suggest it should be a perfectly competitive
The questions I have from last year is: If the embargo ment we were picking up the dregs that no one else wanted why the hell were we paying them so much.
Bogle, Maddison, Gunter and Watson averaged over 4k a week!!!
How did ESI propose to pay Washington and Gilbey.....
For the now George Dobson was on nearly 6k a week at Sunderland 😳😳 and Clare less than 2k. We must have made it worth while for Dobson to terminate his contract? Also assuming Clare got a pay rise, once you include the fee its not really cheap is it?
I am convinced the budget in its self isn't the problem. I think it's the committee can't agree who is worth what, what holds things up and there is/was no budget for replacing JFC, Gilbey or the fee it needs to replace Aneke.
Hull and Peterboro will have been doubly pleased to get promoted on budgets around half of Sunderland's and around the average figure for the division as a whole.
@Cafc43v3r we probably don't want to ponder too much individual player salaries (because we don't know how this lot get their figures, among other reasons) but in Gunter's defence it looks like senior players with 'pedigree' still command a premium. Gunter's agent will say that 100+ Welsh caps are the sign of pedigree, and indeed he was in the Euros and came very close to being the first player to score against Italy in 30 odd games.
I'd like attach the csv file for L1 that season, but it isn't in user friendly form, and does not seem to want to be attached as a file here.
Also surprised at how much Bristol Rovers spent
The Gunter example is correct but doesn't tie into the narrative that no-one else wanted him though.
Comes with a number of caveats:
- Probably wildly wrong in more than a few cases.
- Can't pull any real, cast-iron conclusions (but I've made some of my own...)
- There's plenty of parts in play here, with comings/goings mid/early season.
However, we do know a few things, and that is when players sign and for how long. I've had a play with numbers to compare with last season, what we did in terms of signings and where I think we are at.For contract renewals:
- I suspect Watson and Pearce took a pay cut to stay at the club, but are still high earners. It pains me to imagine how much Watson costs us. Pearce took longer because I reckon we low-balled him.
- JFC got a renewal with a small-ish bump because of his performances but limited due to his injury.
- Matthews probably got a tiny bump, but nothing special.
For the new signings:- Stockley is now probably our top earner. Assume he is on what Pratley/Aneke were on.
- MacGillivray is probably like-for-like on what Amos was on.
- Dobson probably also up there in our higher earners, given what he was (probably) on at Sunderland. Comparable to Shinnie in the numbers, but just a guess.
- Clare is probably on the lower end, maybe similar to Morgan.
- Kirk was likely a complicated/expensive deal to get sorted - I'd guess he's now on a lot for L1 and similar to Gilbey/Washington.
- CBT was probably on fairly low wages, comparatively.
If you cleanse the 20/21 squad down to the 20 or so players we mostly used, you'll see the comparisons with this 21/22 squad in terms of spend and number of players. From a numbers (and not, in fact, in footballing reality), I suspect the leadership team thought we were close, aside from the loans. When put side by side, you add the loans in and *maybe* one more permanent signing of average wages, you get the squad.From this, I have drawn the following not-really-real-but-best-guess conclusions:
- We're likely to bring in a couple of loans, and wages are probably a factor here. I'd love them be Cullen-esque, but they are gambles.
- The dream of bringing in anyone else at the quality of Kirk is unlikely, but hope springs eternal.
- Watson and Schwartz probably make a massive dent in our budget, and this saddens me greatly. Experience is way too expensive if they can't play week in, week out and make a big difference.
- If even some of the numbers from smaller L1 clubs can be believed, there is so much hidden value there if we could find it.
Fun to think about it allThis is presuming he gets full wage whilst injured (I'm not sure), but it's complicated. They almost certainly mulled this over and thought he was worth it, but I suspect many (particularly right now!) would have spent the wages on a player of his quality who is fit. There would be some value in that, but ditching one of your best players from last year would have been incredibly harsh.
They're one of the few clubs in the champ who've actually turned a profit in recent seasons. Maybe the salaries neglect other bonuses, and maybe last season they were able to suppress wages a little due to the obvious. But I'd be very surprised if a 7.8 million salary outlay in 18/19, wasn't nearly matched in 20/21 back in the champ. They haven't released a lot of main first teamers either, and I doubt they paid a lot of the wages for the young keeper they had on loan from Chelsea last season.
Interestingly I'd have thought Hull would have been paying more. It was widely accepted that virtually all their players had a 30-40% pay cut written into their contracts if relegation occurred. Although they'd let go all their top earners upon relegation, I'd still guess you're looking at an 8-10 million wage bill - factor in staged payments for Bowen and Maguire they probably were close to solvent still: The only predicted wages outlay I've seen for Hull was around 14-17 million if they'd have stayed in the champ.
Of the two I know of in and around L1, it appears to me that website is surprisingly wide of the mark. Maybe it's more accurate for benchmark teams in L1?
Our total is about right based on the 18/19 and Gallen's comments last season.
Can't see Charlton 2018/19, but wages were around 10 mill in 2018 and 10.5 mill in 2019. If memory serves the playing budget for wages in 19/20 was said to be around 7 mill for us: So another reduction on the 18/19 season. Possibly discrepancies are non- playing staff, but I don't think 40 non-playing staff took up 3.5 million in 2019.
You rightoff a transfer as you say, unless of course your Derby County cough cough. The same way you would account for any capex in a normal business.
What they don't do is accrue transfer income in a similar way and don't account for any possible adds at all. Football clubs published P&Ls aren't really worth the paper they are written on to be honest. One thing is certain they don't actually give you a proper picture of the financial health of the club at all. Other than the fact they aren't really viable.
What would be much more useful is a proper cash flow statement, but you'll never really see one. Once you take out the paper money there isn't real many Ps or Ls. I did a bit of a deepdive of our 18/19 accounts once and there is so much nonsense in there, and unless you know the back ground, you couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't.
In the same way we won't have been paying 8k a week for Maatsen. We probably paid 50-60% at most.
Wages were supposed to fall in 18/19 but promotion triggered bonuses (on the playing side).
I’ll labour the point again - we were relegated because we spent far too little of the increased revenue in the Championship on player wages.
(I've unfortunately already discovered some worrying discrepancies between the figures you get directly from the website, and those I got by bunging them a tenner for a csv covering the last five years (by league, so it does not give me Charlton's previous Championship wages.) Just a quick inspection shows that the figures for Gunter and Doughty's wages are different, and the csv which ought to be more accurate doesn't include Shinnie who was on our books all season. I will drop them a line, but if it's this messy for us, I expect it is for all the others too.
There's no obvious reason I can see why the gap between the football budget and the overall salary figure this season would have shrunk since 2020. So if you assume £5m-£6m is accurate and add the £4m mooted above for other staff, then on costs, you are already well in front of projected 21/22 L1 revenue of circa £8m and that's before paying for anything else - police, stewards, traffic management, street cleansing, rent, rates, transport, hotels and infrastructure maintenance, etc.
I would have thought that £6 million for us was pretty accurate though.
Maybe teams that a paying tbat sort of dough should f**k off and create their own league...