Caesium137
Well-known member
Surely the point of the thread is we perform to our wage budget and anything above that is down to Carttick? So to quote a classic ' lthe managers input into league position is at best overstated' ?
Performance vs Wage Spend
- Thread starter Left_peg
- Start date
atypical_boro
Well-known member
We’re 25th in the English pyramid. Slightly below our historical average. I’m fine with that personally.
Caesium137
Well-known member
So every game this season we couldn't have expected any better, and what the current management team has delivered is 100% the best we can hope for?
atypical_boro
Well-known member
that’s a big jump.
ForssAwakens
Well-known member
The accounts don’t show how much we are spending on wages for players
Caesium137
Well-known member
Does it matter? Do you think we're spending 50% of our wage budget on a tea lady and the odd amazing physio? Surely we can accept the bulk of any clubs wage budget is on playing staff?
Caesium137
Well-known member
It really isn't unless you have a specific agenda.
There's plenty of games this season we could/should have expected more points from.
atypical_boro
Well-known member
As there is in any season.
My “agenda” is pretty simple. Criticise managers who are crap. Managers who are ok, or better, get off their back? Just my opinion.
indeedido
Well-known member
The point is still that the wage bills quoted at the top of the thread are utter nonsense - and nonsense for all clubs.
It is symptomatic of people relying on estimates from highly dubious sources.
Look at the published accounts, they are the only guide to staff costs for all clubs.
Boro are always one of the first published - ours are just out to June 24, others will drip out in time for last season.
Nobody knows the staff costs for any team this current season.
Our revenue for 2023-24 barely covered the staff costs for last season.
Huge profit from players sales covered amortisation and other admin costs, but there is still a huge shortfall in cost of sales that is not covered by any income - and this is what the ongoing losses are formed by.
We simply cant drive revenue hard enough, or make enough profit from player sales to cover all our Championship costs and keep us competitive.
It still requires backing from the owner, which takes the form of loans, until he does the sort of remarkable debt to equity conversion he's recently done to cover a decade of huge losses.
The club is in remarkably rude health considering its inability to trade without making huge annual losses. Smart revaluation of tangible assets also helps legitimately keep us P&S sweet and then some.
It is symptomatic of people relying on estimates from highly dubious sources.
Look at the published accounts, they are the only guide to staff costs for all clubs.
Boro are always one of the first published - ours are just out to June 24, others will drip out in time for last season.
Nobody knows the staff costs for any team this current season.
Our revenue for 2023-24 barely covered the staff costs for last season.
Huge profit from players sales covered amortisation and other admin costs, but there is still a huge shortfall in cost of sales that is not covered by any income - and this is what the ongoing losses are formed by.
We simply cant drive revenue hard enough, or make enough profit from player sales to cover all our Championship costs and keep us competitive.
It still requires backing from the owner, which takes the form of loans, until he does the sort of remarkable debt to equity conversion he's recently done to cover a decade of huge losses.
The club is in remarkably rude health considering its inability to trade without making huge annual losses. Smart revaluation of tangible assets also helps legitimately keep us P&S sweet and then some.
viv_andersons_nana
Well-known member
I don’t really have a downer on Carrick. I just want more from us at the Riverside and I would love him to try some things out to try and break the pattern. I find it a frustration, that’s all. Overall he’s doing fine, still young and learning, has us in a healthy place in the league table, and is committed to developing players.
It’s just our home record that bothers me more than anything. I think we could and definitely should be a few points better off and challenging for the top two.
Left_peg
Well-known member
My OP quoted figures from a source found with a quick google search from Capology and could well be wildly inaccurate, but it was purely to add another element to the debate on whether people thought Carrick was or wasn’t doing a good job.
I looked at another couple of sites which had different figures (none were anywhere near the £31m from the accounts) but all of them had the rankings largely similar with Boro outside of the top 7 for wage spend.
I still think Carrick and Scott are doing a good job. I do agree that home form should be better. I do agree that we COULD (not should) be 6-8 points better off.
I think we have a couple of gaps in the squad which limit our ability to pick up points in games and solve problems presented by the opposition.
• No direct replacement for Morris due to Howson’s age/injuries
• No natural left sided winger who can create from a wide area, stretching the game when teams play a low block.
• No left back with the quality to provide this threat when McGree/Burgzorg invert. Again, possibly due to injury to Bangura.
I looked at another couple of sites which had different figures (none were anywhere near the £31m from the accounts) but all of them had the rankings largely similar with Boro outside of the top 7 for wage spend.
I still think Carrick and Scott are doing a good job. I do agree that home form should be better. I do agree that we COULD (not should) be 6-8 points better off.
I think we have a couple of gaps in the squad which limit our ability to pick up points in games and solve problems presented by the opposition.
• No direct replacement for Morris due to Howson’s age/injuries
• No natural left sided winger who can create from a wide area, stretching the game when teams play a low block.
• No left back with the quality to provide this threat when McGree/Burgzorg invert. Again, possibly due to injury to Bangura.
Bruce
Well-known member
I know a lot of player wages these days are heavily bonus dependent. If you assume that 85% of our wage bill is the first team squad plus coaching staff then that is roughly £26m last season. You can reckon that 50% is the basic wage and 50% is bonuses. Obviously that's an estimate but you can safely assume that our salary element of player wages was between £13m-£26m last season. My guess would be £15m-£20m on base wages and the rest in bonuses.
The original figures were based on the same methods so it is likely that they were all derived from estimates of basic wages ignoring bonuses. When we get other annual returns we can see if that holds. For example, Coventry in 2022-23 had a wage bill of around £18.5m but an estimate of a little below £10m in the OP. I know some clubs like Cardiff, WBA and Bristol City are still shedding huge wage earners from bad choices a few years ago so I can believe that we have around the 6th-8th largest wage bill presently.
indeedido
Well-known member
No offence Bruce, but neither you, or I have a clue because none of the required info is in the public domain, which is why I pour scorn on the type of rubbish in the OP.
I think you and I agree on lots - and I'm not trying to start a row with you.
ForssAwakens
Well-known member
Yes because correlation of what club spends on players wages tends to lead to whether a club’s successful which is theme through the thread
So yes it does matter, particularly if we’re paying directors a large proportion for example
Redwurzel
Well-known member
Good post.
indeedido
Well-known member
Directors remuneration is specifically separately itemised in the Published Accounts.
The Directors were collectively paid £286k in year to June 24. This against separate Staff costs of £32.2m.
First Team squad players and the coaching staff absolutely dominate the Staff costs.
Academy covers the rest of the playing staff. Whilst real costs, they are small by comparison and are P&S/FFP deductible.
The best indicator of spend on first team squad and coaching staff has to be the published annual staff costs, which are consistently reported by all clubs in their published accounts (which obviously lag the current season)
Left_peg
Well-known member
Do you think we’re in the top 4 for wage spend on first team players?
BoroMart
Well-known member
It’s pretty obvious we’re not there are three relegated teams that pay more and Leeds from the year before. They clearly spend much more than us.
On top of that there’s West Brom, Norwich etc that have historical attempts to get promoted and are still carrying parachute payment wage spend.
On top of that you’ve got you gamblers like Bristol who over spent and are peobably comparable spend.
indeedido
Well-known member
No. I think it highly likely that the PP clubs (Burnley, Sheff U and Luton) will have a legacy higher first team/coaching wage bill).
I also think Leeds will spend much more because they have a much higher revenue and made an absolute fortune from selling players.
But I don't think anybody else is in a position to be spending more than us. But I don't know what they are doing any more than anybody else does, including the joker who constructed the ranking in the OP.
The key thing is nobody knows because the info is not in the public domain - and won't be for this season until the end of next season.
The info in the OP supposedly refers to this season.
Forget the absurdly low numbers for all clubs, I absolutely do not believe that West Brom staff costs will be 70% higher than ours as the rubbish in the Op shows.
Their last published accounts were for the season before last to June 23 and their last year of PP.
They were relegated in 2021 after just one season in the top flight and received PP's for 2021-22 and 2022-23 season only. Teams get 3 seasons PP support only if they are relegated after more than 1 season in the top flight.
They do not receive PP's any longer and have been shedding squad since they ran out.
Bruce
Well-known member
Not a row.
I agree that the initially quoted figures are unlikely to be correct in absolute terms but may not be far off in relative terms: i.e. who spends more than the other on player wages.
We do know from annual accounts what the actual spend on wages is in previous seasons and we do know player wages consist of a base + bonuses. We don't know the ratio of base to bonus but we do know the bonus amount tends to be significant. Although the accounts don't usually separate playing and non-playing staff, we know that the vast majority of the spend goes on 1st team players.
From all of this we could look at the actually published accounts for 22-23 to see which clubs spent what on wages to put them in an order of most to least and use that to estimate last season and the likely amount from this season.
I'm pretty sure salary estimate sites use estimates of the base without bonus and an eye test of the OP looks reasonable in terms of the ranking of most to least. Which is all a long way round of saying that I suspect our wage bill this season will end being around the 6th largest in the league. If we get promoted, bonuses will shoot us to somewhere near the top. If we flatline in 8th and our biggest earners get injured and don't get many bonuses then we'll probably end up a bit lower in the order.
The details are hidden but I doubt anyone would claim there aren't at least 4 teams spending more than us this season.
As an example, Cardiff's wage bill 2022-23 was around £23m which is clearly significantly less than ours in the same season but they will have paid out less in bonuses (due to performances) and I believe still had some huge legacy wages on their books so their base wage bill without bonuses COULD have been a lot closer to ours than the headline figures imply.