4th Lowest Wage Bill - Lowest Excluding The Promoted Clubs

Discussion in 'The Hornets' Nest - Watford Chat' started by The undeniable truth, Jul 29, 2020.

  1. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    No real surprise then that we were battling relegation.
    I expect the wage data will be from the last set of published accounts so the 3 promoted clubs will have had much higher wage bills last season, AV certainly would have been higher than us.
    Still, on the bright side, we came 8th in the points per wage bill table - do we still have to go down ? :).
    https://theathletic.com/1955655/?source=twitteruk
     
    EB Hornet likes this.
  2. I Blame Pozzo

    I Blame Pozzo First Team

    No!
    Appeal!
    It's not fair!
    #SaveEddieandJason
     
    Robert Peel likes this.
  3. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    Still too much for some of the squad !
     
  4. Harrybassetthater

    Harrybassetthater Academy Graduate

    I think that table says it all. What an uneven playing field it is! Wouldn't it be great if promotion and relegation was decided by this table and not the actual table. Man Utd have the highest wage bill so are entitled to finish top. Perhaps they would have if they had Chris Wilder in charge? When you spend the most on players and wages and do not finish in you 'paid for privileged' position I think you should be classed as failures. For us to finish 8th in this table is not too shabby.
     
    EB Hornet likes this.
  5. watfordD92

    watfordD92 Academy Graduate

    Can't say I'm completely shocked as it's the whole Pozzo model, discover talent on the cheap and attract with a decent wage compared to what they're on already. I wonder whether the carrot is dangled that if they perform to a certain level they're sure to attract a bigger club than us with bigger wages, i.e. Richarlison.
    I'd argue they went against their own model a little with signings like Deulofeu and splashing big on Sarr in the last year or two.
     
  6. folkestone orn

    folkestone orn Squad Player

    This should give us an advantage over the muffins then? I wonder if them desperately trying to get compensation is a sign that they will struggle financially? Let's hope so.
     
  7. Moosegasm

    Moosegasm Reservist

    No wonder the players were pi$$ed off they didnt get their bonus!!
     
  8. El distraído

    El distraído Johnny Foreigner

    Bournemouth will have to sell more than us this summer IMO.

    According to the Athletic, 85% of their revenue goes straight to player wages (w0w). Their decision not to expand their ground in their time in the PL has come back to bite them in the arse as they have severely limited their match day revenue as well.
     
  9. folkestone orn

    folkestone orn Squad Player

    Good
     
  10. Supertommymooney

    Supertommymooney Squad Player

    Another sign that although things have gone wrong this season, the Pozzo's get many things right
     
    lm_wfc likes this.
  11. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider

    They don't own the land and would have been restricted to what they could build on it, they didn't buy the land as the landowner was asking for more than 3x the market value. I'm not sure whether they explored other potential sites in the area and considered moving.
     
  12. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Yes we were never going to be able to compete on a level playing field. The myth about becoming an established prem club and then competing to get into Europe, "best of the rest" etc, was never going to be possible realistically.
     
  13. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    They did. They announced outline plans for a new stadium in 2016 but I think the local NIMBYs then got grumpy. And now I suppose it's a non-starter.
     
  14. It is with a bigger ground, and a growing UK and overseas fan base. All they got though was whinging... I don't want a bigger ground, I don't want Chinese fans....
     
    Arakel and UEA_Hornet like this.
  15. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    Looking at that table, Sheff Utd have done a brilliant job.

    Also, Burnley are equivalent to us, paying just £3m more per season. Where they got it right, and we got it so badly wrong, is in defence. We've got probably a better squad than them, but their attitude and quality at the back is vastly superior to ours.

    Even in that final Arsenal match, had we won, we'd have stayed up. We were the better team, created better chances, but were undone by schoolboy defending. Burnley rarely give goals away like that. We do it virtually every week, hence why we're relegated and they are happily sitting in mid-table.

    Look at Wolves. Even though their fans are loathsome, they are paying just £8m more than us. So it is possible to be good on a budget. In Wolves' case it looks sustainable as well.

    At the other end, Bournemouth and Palace are paying way over the odds for their players. Brighton are probably pitched a little high too, but I think they are on the right tracks as a club with their solid defence and signing players like Lallana is definitely a progressive step for them.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2020
  16. GoingDown

    GoingDown "The Stability"

    Had we not spent £40m on a player I'd agree with this. But as we did, I don't.
     
  17. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    It looks like the stadium will come, but clearly it’s not viable as a championship club. An extra 10k fans per season would roughly work out at between £5-£10m extra revenue, but if the stadium costs £100m that’s at least 10 years to pay for it. So we’ll still have the same issues for a number of years trying to maintain our PL status (assuming we’re there) paying such low wages. Even then the extra revenue from the stadium is a couple of Andre Grays in salaries, still a big help but we will still be having to punch above our weight even with a bigger stadium.

    As for overseas fans, we’ll never be a global brand like Man Utd and Liverpool, with it culturally ingrained for certain countries to support them.

    The only way we meaningfully grow out overseas fan base is to buy a player from that country, if we want to penetrate China more we’d have buy one of their players and put them in the team.
     
  18. None of it will happen now we're in the championship. I was lamenting the fact it was so obvious to me why the club needed to do it and almost no one supported the club trying to do it.

    You don't have to be a global brand like Man Utd to still create good revenue. 25,000 shirt sales in 25 countries is good revenue.
     
  19. The Voice of Reason

    The Voice of Reason First Team Captain

    What you are forgetting a19tgg is it is not only ground capacity that will generate extra revenue if any, but all the ancillary revenue that a new stadium will generate as it is not only going to be purely a football stadium.

    It is envisaged that it is going to incorporate a complex providing services outside of football, which would mean we would be able to utilise it's potential income providing opportunities 365 days a year through various other uses it will be able to provide.
     
  20. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    I’m not disagreeing, I support a new stadium and I’ve made the same points in the new stadium post about additional revenue. I was just making the point that a new stadium will take some time to pay for, and we’ll still face the same challenges of sustaining ourselves in the PL until it starts to pay for itself. Not a reason not to do it of course, far from it, but we need to get promoted again first, stay up for a season and then move forward with it.
     
    The Voice of Reason likes this.
  21. Carpster

    Carpster Squad Player

    Firstly what kind of costs were being looked at to build said stadium?
    Secondly and most importantly is would it be sponsored? And how much of this would help building the new stadium? Plus would anyone really care if it was a named Stadium?
     
  22. lm_wfc

    lm_wfc First Team

    Is now the time to add someone to the team?

    If we're looking to mop up some Chinese fans that don't have a team, let's just brand ourselves as the championship favourite. Championship sounds like the best league anyway. Like a blend between champions League and premiership.
     
  23. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    Exactly, what this highlights for me is that we are already working on fine margins, where even when we became an 'established' PL team, we were never far away from disaster. Kinda makes the extreme scrimping on defence look even worse now, just a solid defender or two wouldn't have added that much to the wage bill, but would have definitely meant we'd be safe for another season at least
     
  24. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    Kinda surprised by this in a way, as we do seem to have a lot of dead wood in the squad that doesn't do anything. How many members of our squad are complete passengers?
     
  25. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    Every team has dead wood to an extent. Players like Gary Cahill and Danny Rose would’ve been great signings for us, but we’d never get them because there will always be another club who will pay more. The owners obviously need to have a budget and they can’t gamble too much by going to far beyond that budget. We’ve got amongst the lowest wage bill but still have debt, the riches of the premier league don’t really mean anything because everybody else has them, and everyone else also a richer owner than us, too.

    This is why I have some sympathy with the owners over the defence. We all look at defence as it stands out as the weakest areas of the team, but there is only so much money to go around. Spend loads of money on defence and the problem gets shifted elsewhere in the team. The defence gets highlighted because errors are obvious and lead to goals, but the reality is we didn’t let in anymore goals than a lot of mid table teams. We certainly scored a lot less than them though, but that deficiency is less obvious because we just aren’t getting into positions to score goals so there are no obvious errors to spot. The goals scored column is pretty damning though.

    Either way, with our budget we’ll always be cutting corners somewhere.
     
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  26. FromDiv4

    FromDiv4 Reservist

    Updated with an alternative view. DW had enough good opportunities to win the game and only took one.
     
  27. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    Well......that's another view, but if you don't make the unprofessional errors at the back, two goals is more than enough to win a match.
     
  28. FromDiv4

    FromDiv4 Reservist

    Don't disagree.

    The problem was our lesser players performed as expected, but our "better" players did not perform well enough to carry them through.

    As I have said before we invested in forward looking players, who in previous years masked the lack of investment at the back. This season they did not perform to the level they should, so our defence was exposed.
     
  29. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    The xG stats make for annoying reading, was something like 1.87-4.17 or something mad like that. Both ends of the field disappointed
     
  30. The Voice of Reason

    The Voice of Reason First Team Captain

    Don't forget if we go for a new Stadium/Complex, we will have funds from the sale of Vicarage Road to go into the new stadium development pot.

    We do own Vicarage road don't we???
     
  31. luke_golden

    luke_golden Space Cadet

    In one article I’ve read this week, possibly in The Athletic, they had our xG higher than both Arsenal and Spurs, but we ended up with something like 20 less actual goals than those clubs. Ludicrous discrepancy.

    Can’t be arsed to check the stats myself, so it’s entirely possible I’ve even quoted them wrong, but I clearly remember being angered by whatever I read.
     
  32. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    That sounds about right, think I've seen that floating around. We've been comically bad at finishing for a long time now, it's just this season it's come back to bite us on the bum. A perfect storm of incompetence
     
  33. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Yes, though I imagine it's security for the loans the business has taken out?
     
  34. Shaun

    Shaun Academy Graduate

    Tight Pozzos underspending on wages has led to the toxic atmosphere and sent us down. Very short sited ! They refused to give bonuses to the players as well .


    Joke is !!! They’ll still Probably bankrupt us with their overspending though !
     
  35. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    We playing rugby as well? #club_sporting_de_watford
     

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