Chester Perry wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 5:44 pm
£30m or less is what the noises from club were suggesting for the Championship last season - I find it a stretch (even before promotion bonuses - particularly when it was probable that they were paying Dyche and his potted backroom until January last year.
Add in the new players and a raft of new deals and Premier League uplifts in existing deals - no sales of note but a few loans and a growing off the pitch presence, it obvious that sum will have grown somewhat. I would also include the Management fee that ALK charge (even if it is a separate accounting cost) £1.5m in our last Premier League season, but we have another of them living here full time now so may well have gone up.
I will stress again I have no issue for owners (including Pace and Co) being paid for the time they spend at the club, they are obviously not just sitting around doing nothing.
Personally I would be surprised if it was less than £60m this season and I would not be too surprised if it was over £70m
Don’t think your figures are too far off CP.
The wage bill was down to under £30m after the first summer - I know that for a fact. But you won’t see that number in any accounts because like you say bonuses for going up, signing other players in January, new contracts etc.
Even if the wage bill is around £70m now that’s still a £20m reduction on the numbers under Dyche. Personally I believe that’s quite a big contributory factor to how we have been able to afford to spend like we did last summer (it’s not the sole reason obviously).
Our problems could come when we get relegated this season as we do not have the big wage earners we had last time that we can easily get rid of as we did with Tarks, Mee, Collins, Dwight, Cornet, Wout etc. And it’s also unlikely we can raise anything like £80m in player sales.
In fact if you make the logical assumption that some of our top earners now are the players who cost most in transfer fees it could make our position even more precarious with the likes of Tresor, Amdouni, Trafford etc having a poor season and could be hard to sell without taking a hit.
We are in a very different position to the last time we were relegated.