I think we might need to go up to 50k per week.

Mala591 · Post by **Mala591** » Mon May 22, 2017 10:56 am

It's an 'obscene' amount of money for a weeks 'work' but I think we may have to be prepared to offer £50k per week to attract that bit of extra technical quality to keep us in the premier league next year.

Should we do it or should we stay at the rumoured 35k?

Extra technical quality might also make the clarets more enjoyable to watch and might give Dyche far more options than 4-4-2.

ClaretTony · Post by **ClaretTony** » Mon May 22, 2017 10:57 am

Shame we didn't have it this season - might have helped is stay in the Premier League

Sidney1st · Post by **Sidney1st** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:00 am

An increase is inevitable, but it needs to be a manageable one.
Even at £50k a week we will be behind a large number of clubs, especially those around us, BUT we've already proven we don't need to over pay to stay in the PL.

It will also lead to our current players possibly seeking pay rises.

Quickenthetempo · Post by **Quickenthetempo** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:06 am

We do need to pay 50k a week but it has to go on players worth 50k a week.

We have a bonus system that can net a player an extra 10k on top of his weekly wage so it won't be far off now.

ClaretAndJew · Post by **ClaretAndJew** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:07 am

50k in about 3 years will probably be what we pay. But for now, 35 and just a shade over, with bonuses, will be about or limit.

RocketLawnChair · Post by **RocketLawnChair** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:07 am

Yes we have stayed up CT and everybody at the club should be congratulated on that fantastic achievement. but if Sean Dyche isn't worried about our form and the performances of some of the players since the defeat to Lincoln then he bloody well should be.

I am hoping we have targeted a few individuals who carry the work ethic required but allow us to play with a little more creativity. The work rate is still very important because we will still be defending more than attacking again next season.

it would just be nice to have a player or two who can get you out of you're seat once in a while because we are an hard watch IMO(humble)

Dyched · Post by **Dyched** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:08 am

To attract better players and compete with other clubs to sign them we may need to pay more. To move this club forward we may need to. But it's a difficult one. Sometimes a host of new signings take time to settle and the last thing you want to be doing is playing catch up.

Steve1956 · Post by **Steve1956** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:14 am

If a player can't survive on £140,000 a month he's just a greedy two hat and I wouldn't want him anywhere near our club,if it means we don't attract someone for the sake of an extra 15 grand a week stuff em,I want players at our club prepared to play for the badge not the money...stay as we are £35,000 a week is ample for anyone anything more is pure greed.

PaintYorkClaretnBlue · Post by **PaintYorkClaretnBlue** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:21 am

I agree with the sentiment Steve but the reality of it is the players don't play for the badge, they play for the cash and we need to compete without damaging the club.

Lancasterclaret · Post by **Lancasterclaret** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:26 am

Only real way of competing is continuing to pay the big bonuses for premier league survival.

DCWat · Post by **DCWat** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:27 am

The bonus approach is the right one for us - hopefully it's linked to the league position and not just survival. It's still going to be difficult for us to attract players when others will pay much more guaranteed.

duncandisorderly · Post by **duncandisorderly** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:30 am

Paying 3 or 4 key players 50k will be fine and doable, but we can't afford to pay squad players that.

ClaretTony · Post by **ClaretTony** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:37 am

duncandisorderly wrote:Paying 3 or 4 key players 50k will be fine and doable, but we can't afford to pay squad players that.

I don't know what our wage structure is but the real concern is when you get some players earning considerably more than some of the others. I suspect our highest to lowest aren't too far apart.

Obviously we need to be bringing in some better players if we can but I would have hoped the alarm bells have been ringing at how poor we've looked with Keane & Mee out of the side. I wonder, if those two had played, how many points we might have got from the last three games.

TVC15 · Post by **TVC15** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:39 am

Steve1956 wrote:If a player can't survive on £140,000 a month he's just a greedy two hat and I wouldn't want him anywhere near our club,if it means we don't attract someone for the sake of an extra 15 grand a week stuff em,I want players at our club prepared to play for the badge not the money...stay as we are £35,000 a week is ample for anyone anything more is pure greed.

It's nothing to do with greed or how much players need to "survive".

It's the going rate and good players are in a powerful position to demand these types of wages. We can't say £50k a week is obscene and at the same time think receiving £2m a week for being in the Premier League is "normal".

Neither can we try and compare this to many of our own lives and jobs....as that would be a meaningless comparison.

Wayne Rooney lost £500k in a casino the other week. That's less than 2 weeks salary for him - now that is an obscene way to treat your own money but again to him it's a drop in the ocean.

If we do start to pay wages of £50k a week then it will not bother me a jot as I know the club will be doing this within its budget constraints and I know that Burnley are paying these kind of wages we will still have the lowest wage bill in the league.

We will get left behind very soon if we don't increase the wages we are prepared to pay.

The bonus structure we have built in looks very sensible - it will mean an extra £12k a week for many of our regular first team players.

The extremely strong financial position we are in gives us much more room to adapt to whatever we need to attract the players which give us the best chance to stay in the league. I can't see it being very long at all before Burnley makes its first £20m signing and £50k a week player.

PaintYorkClaretnBlue · Post by **PaintYorkClaretnBlue** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:40 am

I think that tarks looked better when playing alongside Keane rather than Long.

ClaretTony · Post by **ClaretTony** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:41 am

PaintYorkClaretnBlue wrote:I think that tarks looked better when playing alongside Keane rather than Long.

I think both of them have been very poor in those three games. Six goals conceded and I really don't think it would have been anything like that with Keane and Mee playing.

Steve1956 · Post by **Steve1956** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:42 am

PaintYorkClaretnBlue wrote:I agree with the sentiment Steve but the reality of it is the players don't play for the badge, they play for the cash and we need to compete without damaging the club.

....haven't other clubs tried this....Portsmouth,Blackburn,Bolton,Forest,where are those clubs nowadays,if we get relegated by not paying greed motivated players so be it,I would never like to see our club return to the dark old days of the fourth division and crowds of 5,000,I will support my club what ever division we are in,but staying in the Premier League and bankrupting the club is not the be and end all of everything is it?

duncandisorderly · Post by **duncandisorderly** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:47 am

ClaretTony wrote:I don't know what our wage structure is but the real concern is when you get some players earning considerably more than some of the others. I suspect our highest to lowest aren't too far apart.

Obviously we need to be bringing in some better players if we can but I would have hoped the alarm bells have been ringing at how poor we've looked with Keane & Mee out of the side. I wonder, if those two had played, how many points we might have got from the last three games.

Indeed, but I would imagine Vokes, Arfield, Ward etc wouldn't take too much umbrage at Keane being paid £50k a week if it meant he'd stay.
Our players are a grounded bunch and would certainly understand that. It only becomes an issue if we pay Boyd or JBG £50k a week whilst Arfield is only on £25k.

Regarding Keane and Mee - i'm sure it has happened more often than I can remember, but when was the last time we let 2 goals in three consecutive games with those two in the side?

TVC15 · Post by **TVC15** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:47 am

A club that's going to make between £50m and £80m profit is pretty safe from bankruptcy for now I think.

No comparison to Portsmouth or any of the other clubs you mention.

I'd only start to worry when there is something to worry about. At the moment there is absolutely no sign of this.

Steve1956 · Post by **Steve1956** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:51 am

TVC15 wrote:A club that's going to make between £50m and £80m profit is pretty safe from bankruptcy for now I think.

No comparison to Portsmouth or any of the other clubs you mention.

I'd only start to worry when there is something to worry about. At the moment there is absolutely no sign of this.

What! those clubs lived beyond their means paying average players massive wages,dosent take long to spend hard earned money especially in football

Quickenthetempo · Post by **Quickenthetempo** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:59 am

I reckon paying Blake and Little 15k a week before the ITV Digital collapse would of been more of a risk for the club.

aggi · Post by **aggi** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:08 pm

As I posted on another thread earlier today, realistically, including bonuses, some players will be earning £50k a week plus playing for Burnley next season.

I think a lot of people don't realise how much money we are getting from the Premier League in TV money. We could pay most of our squad £50k a week and still break even based on TV money alone.

That's the market we're competing in. I'm all for financial prudence, a bonus structure, relegation clauses, etc but if we're not willing to match the other 19 clubs in the division for wages the players aren't going to come here.

mdd2 · Post by **mdd2** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:14 pm

duncandisorderly wrote:Indeed, but I would imagine Vokes, Arfield, Ward etc wouldn't take too much umbrage at Keane being paid £50k a week if it meant he'd stay.
Our players are a grounded bunch and would certainly understand that. It only becomes an issue if we pay Boyd or JBG £50k a week whilst Arfield is only on £25k.

Regarding Keane and Mee - i'm sure it has happened more often than I can remember, but when was the last time we let 2 goals in three consecutive games with those two in the side?

Five on the bounce starting with WBA away

TVC15 · Post by **TVC15** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:15 pm

Steve1956 wrote:What! those clubs lived beyond their means paying average players massive wages,dosent take long to spend hard earned money especially in football

Those clubs were already in massive debt.

The likes of Portsmouth had a wage bill more than twice as high as ours is today...and that's 10 years ago. They did this whilst already massively in debt. You could not get 2 more different financial structures at a club than ours and them.

Obviously we could go the same way - start paying £100k a week to players etc and start borrowing millions of pounds from new foreign owners......and yes it might only take a few years to get into this type of trouble.

But before you start to worry try and work out what we would need to do to even use up the profit reserves the club will already have built up by this summer.

Most clubs in our league are in debt - but how many of them are in a perilous position ? We are nowhere near being in debt and probably going to be in the top ten (or even better) most profitable clubs in Europe....yes EUROPE.

It's going to take a lot more than paying 4 or 5 players £50k a week to get us anywhere near the situation you seem to be worrying about. Even if we paid everyone of our first eleven players £50k a week we would still be talking about a total club salary bill of around £40m to £45m which would be still one of the lowest in our league.....and still no debt to service.

And as long as we build in relegation clauses into the contracts - which I am sure we do - then there is no reason to think we will go down the road of the other clubs.

We should be celebrating the way the club runs our finances not worrying about it.

randomclaret2 · Post by **randomclaret2** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:22 pm

Our payment from the PL based upon finishing 16th will be around £108 million. Our top earners, as already pointed out, will be on over £50,000 a week when bonuses are included. The bonuses for staying up are worth around an additional 40% for someone playing in all the games, decreasing on a sliding scale according to number of games played.

claretspice · Post by **claretspice** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:38 pm

I'm damned sure that by the end of the summer, including bonuses for surviving, players at Burnley will be earning more than 50k a week. That is the world we live in, unfortunately. It doesn't risk the future of the club, it is just a fact.

Staying up this season is fantastic, but the financial headaches will get bigger. Players will begin to look for significantly bigger pay packets, as established PL players. The good news is that if we continue to offer bonuses that make us decent Premier League payers (i.e. not bottom of the scale) if we hit our targets, we can keep that a bit more manageable. But the days have setting a wage ceiling that starts with a 2 or even a 3 have gone, I'm afraid.

ksrclaret · Post by **ksrclaret** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:46 pm

I think we'll be in for a very difficult summer window. I just can't see us going beyond about 40k a week before bonuses, and I'd have thought even that would only be for the very highest earners.

Blackrod · Post by **Blackrod** » Mon May 22, 2017 12:58 pm

No. Get hungry players in who want to prove themselves then let other clubs sign them and pay them daft wages. Even we sign too many seasoned PL players the club will be on a slippery road financially. I remember Bradfird paying Carbone well above what they should have done and look what happened.

jlup1980 · Post by **jlup1980** » Mon May 22, 2017 1:05 pm

We have to keep our wage structure incentive based IMO. I'd say £35k a week maximum, with the potential for an effective £15k a week bonus based on survival. The standard of player we'll be looking at won't be £50k a week footballers and if they are they'll end up moving to clubs who are happy to pay £50k+ a week as standard. We can't and shouldn't look to compete with that. Sunderland did and look where it got them! Ten years of PL football they might have had, but the club got more and more desperate over the years and salaries spiralled out of control. Their debt now is a noose around their neck. I don't want to see us going the same way. As soon as we start paying £50k a week as standard we'll be on a slippery slope as there's no going back.

claretspice · Post by **claretspice** » Mon May 22, 2017 1:16 pm

ksrclaret wrote:I think we'll be in for a very difficult summer window. I just can't see us going beyond about 40k a week before bonuses, and I'd have thought even that would only be for the very highest earners.

Don't think that's such a leap from the current ceiling, and I think its fairly manageable at that level.

jurek · Post by **jurek** » Mon May 22, 2017 1:49 pm

We may well have to consider 50k a week for some players and even that may not be
enough if we're competing with other Premiership teams for whoever it might be.
Having said that I think the type of player we should be going for (young and hungry)
may mean we don't have to pay out 50k.

Personally I think we should stick to the current system, possibly up the max. to 40k
a week and possibly also increase the bonus payment so players know that if we're successful
they'll be able to increase their average to 50k+

Depending on how much we have to actually spend on incoming and it could well be
over 50m, if in the first instance we need to replace one or two outgoing.
But if both Keane and Gray leave we should have close to 40m available from their sales
albeit it might cost 30m+ plus to replace them.

It's going to be tricky that's for sure. An average Championship player with
premiership potential is likely to cost a minimum 10m, if not closer to 15m.
Whoever they may be it is likely other Premiership teams will be in for them and
likely to offer as much if not more.

claretblue · Post by **claretblue** » Mon May 22, 2017 2:09 pm

'...when was the last time we let 2 goals in three consecutive games with those two in the side?...'

we conceded 2 consecutively against Palace, Albion, Man City, Stoke + Bournmouth before Christmas...all with Keane/Mee together Duncan!

..we then went 14 games without conceded 2 in any!

Bin Ont Turf · Post by **Bin Ont Turf** » Mon May 22, 2017 2:18 pm

claretblue wrote:'...when was the last time we let 2 goals in three consecutive games with those two in the side?...'

we conceded 2 consecutively against Palace, Albion, Man City, Stoke + Bournmouth before Christmas...all with Keane/Mee together Duncan!

..we then went 14 games without conceded 2 in any!

Interestingly Defour started 4 of them 5 games.

Ric_C · Post by **Ric_C** » Mon May 22, 2017 2:34 pm

I'm sure the tactics next season will be to try and sign 4 or 5 hungry young players from the lower leagues which will safeguard our next team rebuild (eg Charlie Taylor, the guy from Barnsley etc)

We should then try and supplement this with a couple of real game changers (eg Ziyech last year). There will be plenty of tight games next season where a bit of magic could swing it. If we need to pay 50k for a couple then that should be within our means.

Vegas Claret · Post by **Vegas Claret** » Mon May 22, 2017 3:28 pm

Kante was on 35k a week at Leicester

It'd about our scouting and recruitment teams more than what we pay

Top Claret · Post by **Top Claret** » Mon May 22, 2017 3:54 pm

One thing is for sure, I doubt if little or no business is done before mid August.

ClaretTony · Post by **ClaretTony** » Mon May 22, 2017 4:39 pm

duncandisorderly wrote:Indeed, but I would imagine Vokes, Arfield, Ward etc wouldn't take too much umbrage at Keane being paid £50k a week if it meant he'd stay.
Our players are a grounded bunch and would certainly understand that. It only becomes an issue if we pay Boyd or JBG £50k a week whilst Arfield is only on £25k.

Regarding Keane and Mee - i'm sure it has happened more often than I can remember, but when was the last time we let 2 goals in three consecutive games with those two in the side?

On the subject of the Keane/Mee - it's happened just once in the season and a half they've been a partnership. It was five games but two of them were wins.

Palace 3-2
West Brom 0-4
Man City 1-2
Stoke 0-2
Bournemouth 3-2

PaintYorkClaretnBlue · Post by **PaintYorkClaretnBlue** » Mon May 22, 2017 5:25 pm

ClaretTony wrote:I think both of them have been very poor in those three games. Six goals conceded and I really don't think it would have been anything like that with Keane and Mee playing.

I'm not disputing that, I'm just saying that tarks looked a better player when playing alongside Mee rather than Long.

KateR · Post by **KateR** » Mon May 22, 2017 5:30 pm

Don't think you can look solely on a weekly amount, it has to be a full package including length of contract, bonus payments for league and cups, number of times played to get in to the bonus scheme, Also this we should (and already may have) a second bonus scheme to be shared for every place above 17, maybe increments of 2 or 3 places rather than single place, with special bonus for top half finish.

Goalposts · Post by **Goalposts** » Mon May 22, 2017 5:57 pm

ClaretTony wrote:I

Obviously we need to be bringing in some better players if we can but I would have hoped the alarm bells have been ringing at how poor we've looked with Keane & Mee out of the side. I wonder, if those two had played, how many points we might have got from the last three games.

totally agree, when you consider the 23 game unbeaten from the championship and the stability of the defence this year -16 goal difference that includes the 6 conceded with tarky and long...it makes you appreciated how good our defence was...and was the foundation of our survival..needs re-establishing for next year

ClaretTony · Post by **ClaretTony** » Mon May 22, 2017 5:57 pm

PaintYorkClaretnBlue wrote:I'm not disputing that, I'm just saying that tarks looked a better player when playing alongside Mee rather than Long.

Absolutely he would, but I think we've seen enough in the last three weeks to confirm we've been playing with our best two centre backs all season. Both Keane and Mee have been very badly missed.

Claret&Green · Post by **Claret&Green** » Mon May 22, 2017 6:29 pm

I suspect we will be playing by far the lowest wages in prem next season, even lower than BHA and Huddersfield or Reading

TVC15 · Post by **TVC15** » Mon May 22, 2017 6:55 pm

Claret&Green wrote:I suspect we will be playing by far the lowest wages in prem next season, even lower than BHA and Huddersfield or Reading

Not sure about that - I think you'll be surprised how much our wage bill has increased to after the last 12 months incomings. Whilst we might shed some with possible departure of Keane, Gray etc the players we will buy to replace are likely to push the wage bill up further.

The 3 clubs you mentioned have not been in Premier League for a while and have not paid big amounts on buying players to get them up - bit like us first time round under Dyche.

It will take them a couple of seasons in Premier League to get near our wage levels I suspect.

It will be good to see that at least 2 of the promoted teams this year have got their without spending vast amounts unlike Newcastle and what Villa are doing now.

Also good that it's not just the relegated teams that are going straight back up - as the parachute payments put them at a massive advantage before a ball is kicked.

First time we went up Dyche said he was genuinely surprised - second time we were one of the favourites because of retaining most of our Premier League team and being able to spending big money on the likes of Gray.

Theoretically as Premier League money increases so does the chances of relegated teams bouncing back in 1 or 2 years.

Colburn_Claret · Post by **Colburn_Claret** » Mon May 22, 2017 7:00 pm

Not every club pays every player, over 50 thou.
There are those that are worth it, and it is far cheaper to pay our best players, Keane included, that kind of money, as it is cheaper than finding an alternative. His value can only increase, presuming he isn't a one season wonder, and I don't believe any of us think that. In certain cases 50 thou could be seen as an investment.