Is Money Talking Too Much In Football?

Over the years, football has become more of a business than a game, players getting transferred for multi-million poud fees and getting paid wages on a weekly basis what far exceed wages in which people on the street earn in a year.

Lets go back to the early 1900s of football, the average weeks wage for a player was less than £5 a week. Standards of living were differant to what they are today, I'll admit that, but to see over the course of a centuary wages to climb into the hundreds of thousands a week, is really staggering, and clubs surely cannot sustain paying this amount of money out. It is said that some Manchester City players are on upwards of 150k p/w. This is an insane sum of money to be paying someone just to kick a ball around a field for 90 minutes every Saturday for 9-10 months of the year. Not to say his contract also pays him out whilst hes on holiday too.



During this current rough period for finances and businesses, a lot of football clubs have hit the wall, or came close to hitting the wall, over the past few years clubs such as Luton Town, Plymouth Argyle, Sheffield Wednesday, have all come close to the grinder, and all got served with winding-up orders, or even worse some went into admin, Sheffield Wednesday are a very lucky club, only getting granted more time due to an outstanding deal being very close to being completed, otherwise they would be on footballs scrapheap of financial mis-managment. Luton and Plymouth were not so fortunate and got hit with points deductions and now face tough roads back to what they once were. Luton though have managed to pull themselves out of the mire, recently losing out to AFC Wimbeldon for a chance to get back into the football league. I can think of more clubs who have not been so lucky also, but these sprang to mind first,

Okay, so seeing your club in financial trouble is bad enough, getting docked points by the Football League is even worse, but how about, your debts crippling you so badly your club is forced to close and re-form, lets take a moment of time for Gretna FC and Chester City here. Gretna were Scottish nobides until a few seasons back when they rose rapidly up the Scottish leagues to the SPL, bankrolled by the late wealthy businessman Brooks Milesson.

Milesson fell ill and was unable to run the club, and his financial support got withdrawn, which plumetted the club into crisis. To which led them being kicked out of the Scottish leagues, and replaced by Annan Athletic.


Chester City on the otherhand have been swanning around in the English League Two for quite a few seasons until their finances took a sour turn, and they were made to fold and reform several leagues below the Blue Sq Premiership. Financial mis-managment and misfortune, in Gretnas case are to blame for lots of clubs down falls, but in reality, these clubs are forced to compete and spend big to keep up with the better teams in the divison, you either get crushed by not spending, or you try and see if your success comes off with some luck. So you are forced to gamble.


Leeds United is a fine example of this, buying players on big contracts, and hoping for success on the field, to get them amongst Englands elite, this was to be a very costly mistake by the Yorkshire club, which led them on a spiral down the football leagues and entering them into League One eventually, Leeds almost died a slow and painful death from their gambling woes, they seem to be back on the up now due to Ken Bates' running of the club.



Sheffield Wednesday could draw a few similarites to Leeds, the only differance is, The Owls did not spend as much, but this also led the club into a serious downfall, for the past decade to which the club has not yet recovered from, but the future is starting to look bright after the new takeover at Hillsborough.


The Football League has a very wrong stand point on clubs who get into financial trouble, that is my personal opinion anyway, docking points does not help clubs, getting relegated does not help them either, its said that clubs lose on average 20-25% of the income if they get relegated. Just think about that for a second, losing a quater of your annual income when your struggling for cash isn't going to help you. The FA and The Football League, need to take a differant approach to clubs in financial trouble, and assist them, not punnish them. I know you could put forward the argument of they should spend within their means, but how can you spend within your means when your competitors are spending more than you anyway, so you have to gamble because if you don't you will end up on the scrapheap anyway, clubs and boards are in a catch 22.


The way to resolve this problem, is simple, take the US view on wages and transfers and everything, and cap them. Stop clubs exceeding their budgets, but do this in a set way that clubs cannot loop hole, for example, set a transfer cap for certain leagues.. For example I will use the Premiership.

Transfer Cap - 60 Million per season
Wage Cap - Wage bills must not exceed over, lets say 500k a week


This will snap clubs back into line, and at the same time give them some freedom in what they spend, but it makes them spend more wise and shrewd, player agents are not helping the situation either by pocketing mega-buck deals for big transfers, but by having restrictions in place, clubs cannot then lavish huge wages about as often, and will make them think twice about paying someone 100k per week.

With this only good things can happen, ticket prices will come down most likely to get more fans to the grounds, also they don't have to charge as much to cover their expenditure losses. Also merchandise will come down too, so in reality, its giving the fans back the game. But TV companies need to play their part too in all of this. Its all good saying lets reduce prices add caps on, but TV companies need to slash what they spend and give to clubs for showing their games, the less they give, the less they have to spend, but you could also look at this and think, if ticket prices are lower, TV revenue has to decline because more people will go to the match.

I am afraid as much as I would like to preech all my views, nothing will change until clubs push fans too far, and fans cannot afford to go to games, until then, football will always be more about business than fans, I would hope one day a revolution comes about which gives fans the game back, until then though expect to see lunatic fees being paid, for wages and players, and expect ticket prices to continue to rise. QPR have already nearly doubled their season ticket prices, and Christiano Ronaldo is worth around 158,000,000. Until clubs are controlled properly, this will continue to happen.

Thankyou for reading!