The breaking News thread...

[Bruce Rioja]

I thought at that point under Freedman we were supposedly reducing the wage bill.

Presumably that does represent a reduction. What must the likes of Eagles have been on?

God only knows. And where is he today?

Bury's stiffs (so I heard last week).

[plymouth wanderer]

Feeney was free transfer wasn't he? I think in most cases If a club isn't paying a fee, the player/agent pushes for a higher salary! Sad but true. It was whoever gave him the contract is in the wrong. (Gartside rip)

Staggering amount of money for most of them. Still, it is Nixon, a pinch of salt is needed

[BWFC_Insane]

I thought at that point under Freedman we were supposedly reducing the wage bill.

Presumably that does represent a reduction. What must the likes of Eagles have been on?

God only knows. And where is he today?

Bury's stiffs (so I heard last week).

Really is quite frightening when you think about it. As LK says we've just been pissing money up the wall.

[Peter Thompson]

Where are those figures from? What's the reliability?

I admit to surprise at the Feeney one, as I thought at that point under Freedman we were supposedly reducing the wage bill.

Apparently they are in the Sun & are on twitter

Not sure if the link below works ?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CcXjXUUWIAAu5Lv.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Lord Kangana]

Presumably that does represent a reduction

I suppose comparatively to his position it would do, I was more looking at Pratley - I'd assumed he was one of our top earners - considering he was a free signing in the heady Premier League days. Extension?

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

Presumably that does represent a reduction

I suppose comparatively to his position it would do, I was more looking at Pratley - I'd assumed he was one of our top earners - considering he was a free signing in the heady Premier League days. Extension?

He renewed in the summer. You'd hope a reduction, but knowing us they probably put it up

[Worthy4England]

If true these salaries are staggering....I don't think many will be surprised by M Davies, Spearing & Wheater etc....but some of the others are absolutely unbelievable, it's no wonder we are in the shit financially, who the hell approved these:

Feeney £17k - I thought he's be on about £6k-£7k
Heskey £7k - I thought about £3k - £4k
Trotter £11K - I thought similar to Feeney (around £6k-£7k)
Osede £10k - I thought would be on £5k max
Madine £8k - as above I would have thought £5k max
Pratley £14k - I thought would be around £10k
Amos £16k - we'd all heard about this weeks ago, but £16k a week is simply amazing

Leaving "affordability" to one side a sec.

The average weekly salary in the Champ is around £17k per week - based on salaries reported last year divided by a 25 man squad - no more scientific than that. That's going to be skewed on the really high side by clubs coming down from the Prem with Prem wages - they'll have a greater impact on the average than those coming up from L1, because the gap L1 --> Champ probably isn't as large as the gap Champ --> Prem. So there's only 8 teams above that number and 16 below it.

But even if you exclude those, the average is still at £9-10k per week. So the group above are over that "average" @ £12k per week, but would be well under it at the lower end of your revised numbers at nearer £6k per week which is "bottom 7, average" - so they probably wouldn't be playing for us - which in the case of most of them, wouldn't be noticeable, and would link a lot more closely to our league position.

MKD, I think, were the lowest on the list at £2.6k. Given our league position, you'd expect our lot to average around there TBH...

[Worthy4England]

Where are those figures from? What's the reliability?

I admit to surprise at the Feeney one, as I thought at that point under Freedman we were supposedly reducing the wage bill.

We did - took £10m's out under Freedman and under Lennon.

[Lord Kangana]

Each or collectively?

[Bruce Rioja]

Really is quite frightening when you think about it. As LK says we've just been pissing money up the wall.

The 'classic' one for me will always be Zat Knight. The big, useless c*nt decided that upon the expiration of his contact he'd see who came in for him. Completely unsurprisingly his representatives didn't field one single enquiry, so, about a fortnight before the season was about to start he turned up, cap in hand, back at our place - and in a buyer's market without a single other club looking to take him on we put him on £30K a week - and some people wonder why we're skint!

[Lord Kangana]

Over time you forget these things. But its easy to see where the money has gone, bad decision compounded by bad decision. Surely for that money we could have got a suitable replacement? I bet we could have got a suitable Championship replacement for a damn sight less!

[Worthy4England]

Each or collectively?

Each.

[thebish]

If true these salaries are staggering....I don't think many will be surprised by M Davies, Spearing & Wheater etc....but some of the others are absolutely unbelievable, it's no wonder we are in the shit financially, who the hell approved these:

Feeney £17k - I thought he's be on about £6k-£7k
Heskey £7k - I thought about £3k - £4k
Trotter £11K - I thought similar to Feeney (around £6k-£7k)
Osede £10k - I thought would be on £5k max
Madine £8k - as above I would have thought £5k max
Pratley £14k - I thought would be around £10k
Amos £16k - we'd all heard about this weeks ago, but £16k a week is simply amazing

Leaving "affordability" to one side a sec.

The average weekly salary in the Champ is around £17k per week - based on salaries reported last year divided by a 25 man squad - no more scientific than that. That's going to be skewed on the really high side by clubs coming down from the Prem with Prem wages - they'll have a greater impact on the average than those coming up from L1, because the gap L1 --> Champ probably isn't as large as the gap Champ --> Prem. So there's only 8 teams above that number and 16 below it.

But even if you exclude those, the average is still at £9-10k per week. So the group above are over that "average" @ £12k per week, but would be well under it at the lower end of your revised numbers at nearer £6k per week which is "bottom 7, average" - so they probably wouldn't be playing for us - which in the case of most of them, wouldn't be noticeable, and would link a lot more closely to our league position.

MKD, I think, were the lowest on the list at £2.6k. Given our league position, you'd expect our lot to average around there TBH...

hmmm... so the screaming outrage headline should probably read summat more like:

"Bolton's fairly average Championship Wage Bill shocker"

[Lost Leopard Spot]

If true these salaries are staggering....I don't think many will be surprised by M Davies, Spearing & Wheater etc....but some of the others are absolutely unbelievable, it's no wonder we are in the shit financially, who the hell approved these:

Feeney £17k - I thought he's be on about £6k-£7k
Heskey £7k - I thought about £3k - £4k
Trotter £11K - I thought similar to Feeney (around £6k-£7k)
Osede £10k - I thought would be on £5k max
Madine £8k - as above I would have thought £5k max
Pratley £14k - I thought would be around £10k
Amos £16k - we'd all heard about this weeks ago, but £16k a week is simply amazing

Leaving "affordability" to one side a sec.

The average weekly salary in the Champ is around £17k per week - based on salaries reported last year divided by a 25 man squad - no more scientific than that. That's going to be skewed on the really high side by clubs coming down from the Prem with Prem wages - they'll have a greater impact on the average than those coming up from L1, because the gap L1 --> Champ probably isn't as large as the gap Champ --> Prem. So there's only 8 teams above that number and 16 below it.

But even if you exclude those, the average is still at £9-10k per week. So the group above are over that "average" @ £12k per week, but would be well under it at the lower end of your revised numbers at nearer £6k per week which is "bottom 7, average" - so they probably wouldn't be playing for us - which in the case of most of them, wouldn't be noticeable, and would link a lot more closely to our league position.

MKD, I think, were the lowest on the list at £2.6k. Given our league position, you'd expect our lot to average around there TBH...

hmmm... so the screaming outrage headline should probably read summat more like:

"Bolton's fairly average Championship Wage Bill shocker"

The headline I prefer is "Why aren't these nice people Average" with the sub-heading "Wage Bill Indicates We Are Entitled to an Average Performance But Our Lot are Pants"

[Lord Kangana]

Each or collectively?

Each.

So where does our wage budget now sit re the rest of the division (does this data even exist?)? And where our theoretical finishing position, based on financial wherewithal, should be?

I'd be interested to see how tough a time of it Lennon has actually had (admittedly, finance doesn't automatically = position, but you get the crux).


I suspect there's an awful lot of overhang of wage budget through each manager Megson-Coyle-Freedman-Lennon (I exclude Lee as he appears, on the face of it, to have been given f*ck all) as each would have been promised to get some new blood in probably in exchange for agreeing over their tenure to reduce. I'm presuming that's a large part of why so many are out of contract this summer. Only the second half of the deal, "you can then reinvest in your own" is a little bit of an empty promise right now.

[TonyDomingos]

And guess how long Nixon says it will be until the next instalment of this never ending saga?

"Ex-Trotters hero Holdsworth, 47, has already submitted several budgets to the Football League who have yet to accept them.

He has 48 hours to come up with one that works before the next meeting."

[thebish]

And guess how long Nixon says it will be until the next instalment of this never ending saga?

"Ex-Trotters hero Holdsworth, 47, has already submitted several budgets to the Football League who have yet to accept them.

He has 48 hours to come up with one that works before the next meeting."

[Lost Leopard Spot]

And guess how long Nixon says it will be until the next instalment of this never ending saga?

"Ex-Trotters hero Holdsworth, 47, has already submitted several budgets to the Football League who have yet to accept them.

He has 48 hours to come up with one that works before the next meeting."

And I bet Holdsworth is really 48

Plus if you assign a number to each letter of the alphabet such that A=1 B=2...Z=26, guess what Dean Holdsworth, DH=48

[Harry Genshaw]

If I was Darren Pratley I'd be having a word with my agent.

With the exception of the kids, they're all a bunch of overpaid tosspots

[Worthy4England]

Aye the underlying story seems to be that we'd struggle with that wage bill in D1 - which is almost certainly correct. You don't set your wage budget to go down each year, because that's a self fulfilling prophecy, generally. He gets to £6.8m from those players listed 14 players. If we assume that the remaining 11 senior squad players are on at best half that, then we'd have a budget of circa £10m - which is bottom 6...

The problem is, the teams that came up averaged £3.5m - the advantage of the numbers being so high is that we can get rid of £2.8m from those numbers just by not renewing the out of Contract players leaving us at about £7m vs £3.5 so still some work to do if we go down.

That's all still against averages rather than affordability.