Madejski moaning about wages in football...

[michael]

...again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2008/08/madjeski_right_to_hit_out_at_w.html#035131

"A survey in 2006 revealed that the average Championship footballer earns £195,750 per year, or to put it another way £3,764 a week. The figure dropped to £67,850 in League One and £49,600 in League Two."

So that is about £1.3k a week in league 1.

As a comparator, I once added myself onto Football Manager and found myself earning £10k a week basic at the age of just 18. I don't play it anymore though, I consider it to be a waste of time.

[Simon Pieman]

Wages are an issue but you need to look at the root cause. The commercial success of football is to blame - it gives clubs too much money, or the incentive to get it and so they get greedy which in turn makes them spend beyond their capabilities. Wigan is a prime example, if they drop out of the Premiership I think they're going to get mega fucked.

Of course when you get teams with super rich benefactors it worsens the problem further, as other clubs have to spend more to try and keep up with the pace.

Whilst the Premier League is an undoubted commercial success, which brought top flight football out of its darkest times, it's screwed the game up as a whole. Only 10 of the clubs that broke away to form it are still in that league. The likes of Leeds, Nottingham Forest, Southampton and the now extinct Wimbledon show what happen when it goes wrong.

[axs]

and town of course.

[suttonred]

All the big clubs should show some savvy, sit down and agree not to pay say more than 50k pw on wages for the top end players. commercial sense would entail, as not many football clubs live in the real world, and in this day and age wont be long before a public or fiscal backlash occurs.

[Simon Pieman]

The problem is you'd have to make that agreement worldwide - never going to happen.

A more sensible distribution of things like television income would be better.

[suttonred]

The problem is you'd have to make that agreement worldwide - never going to happen.

A more sensible distribution of things like television income would be better.

  Yes i did mean worldwide, i know it will never happen, as it's common sense, and that and logic dont apply in football, as most are in to make a fast buck and damn the consequences. Maybe the US style overall wage cap might be the answer.

[Simon Pieman]

I did my dissertation on salary caps and in the US, alll of the different salary caps have really come up against some major problems. I doubt you could enforce a strict limiting one as you say, an overall cap would be the only approach.

At the moment the FL has a salary cap for L1 and L2, which is more of an agreement but it proves quite effective, but still doesn't stop clubs getting into trouble. If you take the example of Swindon, poor management and Diamante messed us up more than any player wage did.

If the Premiership ever put one in place I reckon teams would just split from it and form another league, much as they did when they formed the PL itself.

It's a sorry bastard state of affairs. Which should count ourselves lucky we seem to have level headed owners who are trying to run a steady ship.

[leefer]

I blame Jimmy Hill,they were all on 20 woodbines a week before he got the players wages up to a fair level.