I hope iam wrong. Just get the feeling both sides have made up their mind and don’t remember too many big renewals with 12 months left.
The Egyptian King
- Thread starter Dreambeliever
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A one-year rolling extension is in everyone's best interest or a one year plus optional one. If he continues delivering the numbers, he’s worth it.
At this point, we’ve already sacrificed a hefty transfer fee for the sake of continuity, so that’s off the table. Now, it’s about getting value for money in terms of his wage demands while also protecting our long-term interests. From his perspective, he knows that the offer from Saudi will be available whenever he’s ready to take it. A one-year rolling deal allows him to leave when he chooses, without compromising the club’s future.
Overall, I’m confident that:
a) there will be funds to replace him when the time comes, and
b) we’ll do a good job of finding the right replacement. But is that time now? Not for me. I don’t see a viable option to match his numbers by next summer. We kinda blew that transition by investing heavily in Nunez.
At this point, we’ve already sacrificed a hefty transfer fee for the sake of continuity, so that’s off the table. Now, it’s about getting value for money in terms of his wage demands while also protecting our long-term interests. From his perspective, he knows that the offer from Saudi will be available whenever he’s ready to take it. A one-year rolling deal allows him to leave when he chooses, without compromising the club’s future.
Overall, I’m confident that:
a) there will be funds to replace him when the time comes, and
b) we’ll do a good job of finding the right replacement. But is that time now? Not for me. I don’t see a viable option to match his numbers by next summer. We kinda blew that transition by investing heavily in Nunez.
What I don't get is why we have to accept that if we pay big wages for Salah we're basically fucked for building the squad. Over the years we've become one of the wealthiest clubs on the planet, yet here we are with a wage bill of 125m compared to the mancs 185, and they somehow sponk another 200 each year on trash and manage to rinse the place for dividends.
I think we can have it both ways if that's what we need to do.
I think we can have it both ways if that's what we need to do.
Additionally if you don't think current Salah is worth £3 million a year more than Rashford, Grealish and £5M a year more than Sancho, Mount and Reece James then I don't know what to say. That lot are lucky to get on the pitch. We're not talking radical proposals here. It's just Henry being a minge-bag from his super yacht.
Sell some LFC Lebron aftershave to the top reds and get it done.
Sell some LFC Lebron aftershave to the top reds and get it done.
Hey look, these other clubs are in the shit because they are overpaying their fading talents. Let's use them as a benchmark!
I do agree fundamentally with you, that we shouldn't overpay to keep him. But equally (for me), we've left ourselves open to be fucked over by Salah and any potential replacement. Id like to think we could find some relatively fair balance between paying what he's worth and paying him less than he's currently on.
However equally I also agree with Woland; we should have a fucking huge amount of money to spend on keeping star talents as we don't fucking spend it in transfer windows.
Are they? Are Manure in the shit? I mean financially obv. They pay all their bills, all their dividends, all their stupid transfers from revenue and have cash to spare. We'll beat them for revenue this season.
We pay big wages. In 2023, the last year for which we have the full information, we paid £373m, United £331m, City £423m, Arsenal £225m, Chelsea £373m, Spurs £251m.
So only City paid more, and they won the treble that year, we were shite.
To be clear, this is all staff, and we do virtually everything in-house, so we have bigger staff numbers than some of the other clubs, but it's players and managers driving most of those numbers.
The tea lady has to be on the same as Big Nat surely?
The NYSE listing relates to Man United's Class A shares only. When Ineos bought into the club, they purchased 25% of the Class A shares AND 25% of the Class B shares.
The Plc's accounts state that the rights of the shares are identical, except that the B shares get 10 votes to every 1 vote for the A shares. So arguably the B shares would be worth more than the A shares, and the total Ineos stake is worth at least twice the quoted share price (so basically still worth what they paid for them).
EDIT - and they were trading about $16 when Ineos bought in.
I don't think we have left ourselves open to be fucked by a replacement. That's why we bought Chiesa.
Don't forget that you need to value Salah as both a footballer and a commercial asset.
It's mad that the three guys who are out of contract next summer are also probably the three most attractive players to our sponsors. That may be why those deals are not done yet - they know what they're worth and we know it's going to cost us, so we're delaying the pain.
It's mad that the three guys who are out of contract next summer are also probably the three most attractive players to our sponsors. That may be why those deals are not done yet - they know what they're worth and we know it's going to cost us, so we're delaying the pain.
Is this the modern "he'll pay his wages with shirt sales?"
😉
Yeah, but with sponsorship deals you actually get all that money.
When we first signed him, and he was having that great first season, the sponsor interest was insane, including loads of approaches from Africa, where we'd never done business before, but most of those deals didn't come off as either we couldn't get comfortable we'd get paid or else they wanted to use his image for stuff that was not acceptable to him for religious reasons (e.g. non-Sharia financial products). But the fact that sponsors were coming to us, where previously we couldn't even get through the door, opened up all sorts of opportunities.
And our existing sponsors couldn't get enough of him either as he gave them the possibility to improve their reach into North African and Arabic territories.
It's probably one of those situations where you don't know what he's truly worth until he's gone, but clubs need icons to attract the bigger deals. It doesn't matter how nice your logo looks on a club shirt if it's being worn by a non-entity who is barely recognisable to his own club's fans.
Providing chiesa works out, maybe. It's a huge weight on his shoulders, and we're not sure yet if his knees can take it. Really we've only got until January to find that out.
As you mention that the 373m is all staff. I was looking at the figures from this website which claims to have the data from published data & their figures (though likely only for playing staff) is 138m which is far away from 373m. The same applies for all other clubs where the highest being City however at only 203m. Any thoughts on what could be the reason?
https://www.capology.com/uk/premier-league/payrolls/2023-2024/
Not a chance that’s true. Staff payroll will be £40-50m tops. The player / manager / coaching wage bill will be at least £300m.
Staff numbers in 2023 (excluding players / coaches) were 770. I’ve excluded the match day stewards etc. which will be around £5-7m - mostly 8-hour shifts on minimum wage.
The numbers from the site above imply an average staff salary, excluding social security etc. of £235m / 1.15 / 770 = £265k. I was quite senior and I was nowhere near that. The senior execs were not getting anywhere near the pay needed to drag the average up.
My £50m number would imply a typical salary of about £56k, which still looks high as an average, when you consider a lot of those staff will be clerical, catering, retail etc.
You could probably do a better estimate extrapolating the gender pay gap data but it’s probably beyond my basic maths capabilities.
EDIT
Looking again at that capology site, I think their estimate is probably only for our first choice eleven. They probably haven’t considered bonuses, or subs / squad players. That’s why their midfield number is lower than defence when we had more midfielders in the squad who were probably paid more on average than the defence. Their number is lower because we played 4-3-3, so they’re counting 3 midfielders v 4 defenders. It’s bullshit.
No its for the entire first team squad (27 players in total) however looks like it only includes the weekly base pay i.e. no bonuses etc. included. The figures based on the top earners i.e. Salah, Virgil, Thiago & TAA seem quite realistic. Breakup in the link below. The total basis the breakup & earlier link differ slightly.
https://www.capology.com/club/liverpool/salaries/2023-2024/
It also doesn't include agent fees, social security, bonuses, as you say, (performance-related and "loyalty"), signing-on fees (although these are rare now) all of which are included in our wage cost figure. For some players, those amounts add 50%+ to the total cost.
The way this is presented, it looks scientific, but it's just educated guesswork, with possibly a little press speculation from when players signed their deals.
But trust me, the lion's share of our wage bill is players and coaches.
How do things like on-costs work for players, pensions, etc? I assume they earn enough they we have no obligation to be paying them in retirement?
Yeah agreed. My original question was to get a better understanding of how the overall payroll of 373m can be broken down. From what I have been able to gather we can account for upto 200 - 220 M on the first team squad & coaching staff excl. performance related & loyalty.
First team squad base pay : Between 140 - 160 M (Copology)
Agent Fees : 32M (Guardian from FA data)
1st team coaching staff : 25 - 30 M (21M for Klopp as claimed by German FA)
Makes overall sense to me.
Social security works as normal, so that basically adds 13.8% to every wage and is accounted for and collected via payroll.
Pensions are different. The players aren't part of any workplace pension scheme (although they are subject to auto-enrolment, from which they opt out). There is an annual contribution of £6k to the players' pension scheme. When every transfer takes place between domestic clubs, a transfer levy is payable at 4% of the value of the transfer (NB this is different from the FIFA solidarity mechanism which provides a windfall for training clubs when players are transferred internationally). The transfer levy is used to fund the players' pension scheme, and also to pay certain admin expenses for the FA and (I think) the PFA.
The following is from the standard player contract:
For as long as the Player remains a member of the Scheme, an annual contribution (funded by the levy on transfer fees) will be paid into the Scheme for the benefit of the Player. The annual contribution shall be £6,000 or such other amount as determined by the Trustees of the Scheme from time to time.
Any additional pension arrangements (e.g. non-statutory pots via trust structures or personal private pension top-ups to lifetime allowance) will be implemented by the players / their agents / advisers. Clubs won't generally have any visibility of that, and indeed they don't get much feedback on the players' pension scheme either. The standard player contract provides for a normal retirement age of 35, so I assume they can start drawing their pension at that point.
Players are taxed on any benefits in kind provided in the normal way through the P11D process that applies to other employees. The main cost here is their share of their agent fees, which are generally paid by clubs, with clubs typically also paying them a "loyalty" bonus to help the poor mites cover the cost of the tax on their benefits when they file their tax returns.
It seems barely credible that we have the same wage bill as United or Chelsea. They have been overpaying for shite players for years. In fact, other sources claim us to be about 5th in the wage table with a gross wage outlay less than 70% of the wages that United pay their staff/players/coaches. Which would seem more likely based on my (admittedly) eyeball maths.
Illustration: Leny Fucking Yoro is on similar wages to Szoboszlai, Robbo, and Gakpo
Illustration: Leny Fucking Yoro is on similar wages to Szoboszlai, Robbo, and Gakpo
Just to clarify on agent fees, the amount we declare (as reported by the Guardian) is the total amount paid to agents the relevant period. A typical agent fee will be split between services provided to the player and those provided to the club. The usual starting point for this is 50:50 (historically acceptable to HMRC), although I understand HMRC is looking to push this so more is attributed to the player. HMRC's argument is essentially that a lot of what is paid to the agent ends up back with the player (i.e. stuff the agent pays on the player's behalf, like hush money in kiss and tell stings, allegedly).
Because VAT can't be recovered on the player element of the fees, this typically means that a little over half of the total cost will go to wages, the rest will be included in the costs of acquiring the player (i.e. it is added to the transfer fee and included in "Intangible assets", where the accounting cost spread over the life of the contract at the same rate as the transfer fee.
However, in most cases the club will not only pay the player's share of the fee, but they will also pay the tax due on it (the player would be taxed on a benefit in kind on the amount paid on his behalf). Because of the prevailing tax rates, this effectively doubles the total cost of the player's share of the agent's fee.
So using your £32m figure, probably £17-18m will be players' share and the total cost to the club will be something like £34-36m.
Over the last 5 years, there have been years when our wage bill has been higher than United, and years when it's been lower, but the average is £338m for us v £331m for them. An average is probably a better guide as both team's numbers will fluctuate based on success. They'll also have made some chunky payments to sacked managers, which we obviously didn't.
Their non-footballing staff numbers were 687 per the last accounts (against our 770), so that would seem to push the staff share of the total payroll number up a little. But all told, it would appear to me that their players payroll is likely to be lower than ours.
When it comes to Chelsea, fuck knows what's going on there.
Just to summarise those average (total payrolls) over 2018-2023:
City £360m
LFC £338m
Utd £331m
Chelsea £304m
Arsenal £226m
Spurs £205m
Leicester £177m
Everton £166m
And yes, that is the top 8, there is no-one between Leicester and Everton.
