Cod Almighty | Diary
A trade union, but not as we know it
11 August 2020
On Friday the Football League voted to impose a salary cap on clubs in divisions three and four. The cap was set at £1.5m per squad in the fourth flight. The wages of players sent out on loan would be deducted, and payments related exclusively to promotion or cup competitions would be excluded.
With the prospect of live football in front of anything other than 30 per cent capacity grounds seemingly receding it would seem a progressive, if flawed, move. With the cap excluding bonuses there is nothing to stop the better supported teams and the financial dopers loading their contracts with astronomical 'bonuses' for each cup-match victory, or play off place and promotion. These will undoubtedly be used by the likes of Salford and Forest Green Rovers to attract players their piss poor support could not sustain.
For other clubs, the reality is that at our level the amount of revenue generated by match day income is far greater than at higher levels. While those at the top of the ladder make only 13 per cent of their income from matchday fans, this triples to almost 40 per cent in the case of division four clubs. The squad size of those clubs, including first year professionals, was between 30 and 38 last season. That suggests an average salary of aroud £44,000: some £20,000 more than the UK average wage.
The Professional Footballers Association has opposed the salary cap, claiming lack of consultation. It is an unusual position to take for an organisation supposedly existing to protect all professional footballers. With upwards of 1,400 of those members without contracts as of 1 July and with clubs facing financial meltdown due to Covid-19 a system which on the face of it helped clubs remain sustainable would seem worth supporting.
This however is football where the reality of economics goes out of the window. If the PFA really did exist to protect its members they'd have been at the forefront of discussions to make football at all levels more sustainable. But the record of the PFA on protecting it's most vulnerable members is at best dubious. Casual Diary has written before on their criminal lack of action following the ITV Digital travesty. Their CEO - the title tells you all you need to know - earns £2.3 million per year with other benefits of £52,000 excluding pensions.
The PFA will no doubt claim that the salary cap is a step back to the dark days of the maximum wage. It is nothing of the sort. Neither will it bring about the financial equality between clubs to restore some of the balance lost when home revenues stopped being shared, a move where again the PFA were remarkably quiet. It would better serve it's most vulnerable members by mounting a concerted campaign for the Premiership to share a fraction of its TV revenues to replace the £40 million division four clubs have lost due to the pandemic. That would be truly representative of its membership, and acting like a trade union should. That would never happen.
On matters exclusively Town. Holloway tells us we should be excited at the prospect of his signings. He tells us that his contacts will give him an insight into the characters of the players he wants. He cites the arrival of Glennon and Benson last season as indicative of how this works. While the second week in August would normally be peak excitement, as the season commenced in earnest, the fact that with a 30 per cent capacity the likelihood of me seeing the players he signs in the flesh before Christmas are slim has left me feeling massively underwhelmed.
UTM