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I’ve taken a look at some of our rivals for this year and estimated what their playing budgets will be based on their accounts , attendance and articles
Carlisle had a playing budget of £4.3mm last year and don’t seem to have scaled back much.
Southend seems to be £3.4, which is interesting as they only had a £2.5mm turnover last year.
These two are betting on getting league status and without it could well be in trouble.York lost 200k last year and given their attendance I would estimate their playing budget to be around £2mm
Hartlepool lost £800k last year so I would estimate their playing budget to be just under £2mm. Although they do appear to be trying to reduce this so things are not great at the monkey hangers.
Forest Green are interesting as they have a revenue of £8mm, which is four times ours. Most of this is from sponsorship and has to be given that they have no fans. They lost £3.5mm last year so I assume they have a high playing budget and they are also gambling with their future. The appointment of Lily Savage would also indicate a high playing budget.On the other end of the scale, there is Gateshead who have a high turnover of players and Morecambe who are screwed and only have ten registered players.
All this being considered it was Barnet who went up as champions with a modest playing budget
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Interesting question.
That doesn’t sound a million miles away from what an average NL budget might look like and what ours is, but clubs very rarely release specific figures – and even full accounts are oblique enough not to reveal the actual number.
Wrexham ran at nearly £7m the year they went up and Oldham and Southend are rumoured to be at around the £3m+ mark.
Other end of the scale, some clubs will be running significantly less at sub £1m.
The perceived wisdom is that player salaries should be between 60/80% of turnover – assuming no special factors are in play – such as a wealthy backer or, conversely, chronic financial issues.
Pre Covid – our turnover was running in the 3.5m region but that is misleading – because I believe League 2 clubs receive circa 1.5m each in solidarity payments from the PL whilst NL clubs get next to nothing.
I suspect (and this is mere speculation) that our net turnover (leaving aside VAT on sales etc) currently sits at somewhere in the region of £2m+, so £1.1m would be say in the region of 50%, which given our precarious financial position seems about right.
The issue besides that is that if you have say 20 players all on £1k a week that doesn’t mean your budget is £1m a year – it is significantly higher when taking into account NI contributions, pension contributions, incidentals such as bonuses etc.
The last set of figures I looked at indicated only 2 NL sides broke even that particular season……meaning the majority are living beyond their means which is always possible in the short term but not sustainable in the long term – as we’ve recently found out.
So, we will probably have to accept that there will be clubs in that league who aren’t getting our numbers through the turnstile but are operating on bigger budgets for whatever reason at the current time.
The perfect example is Kouogun going to Hartlepool – a side getting a fair number less through the turnstiles than us but who are clearly able and willing to pay more at this time (because it’s fairly obvious he hasn’t gone up there for the weather!)
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Spot on there. He can only sign who he can afford.
If he had a blank chequebook then Fitzsimons wouldn’t have gone and we’d have Messi up front etc etc etc – but it’s not the way life works.
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This thread is far too sensible for this board.
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The only thing Watson is proven at in the league is shipping goals for fun. There’s a reason he’s only played 14 games since he left us in 2022.
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