Sunderland will oppose a flat salary cap

[gowlcra]

He's absolutely right. The idea of a wage cap is supposed to be to keep teams afloat, to ensure they are sustainable. But it doesn't do that. If one club has 20 times the turnover of another, a flat wage cap isn't ensuring both can survive, its just actively penalising the club that could comfortably, safely, spend more on wages. A limit as a percentage of turnover is much fairer if the aim is the survival of the clubs. Of course, with SCMP they already seem to have that, so why don't they just enforce that rather than introducing something that means a club with 30,000 paying fans is only allowed to offer the same wages as a club with 2,000

Agreed and that wages to turnover ratio 70pc is already in place. Typical they try this shite when we happen to turn up

 

[Deleted member 46623]

He's absolutely right. The idea of a wage cap is supposed to be to keep teams afloat, to ensure they are sustainable. But it doesn't do that. If one club has 20 times the turnover of another, a flat wage cap isn't ensuring both can survive, its just actively penalising the club that could comfortably, safely, spend more on wages. A limit as a percentage of turnover is much fairer if the aim is the survival of the clubs. Of course, with SCMP they already seem to have that, so why don't they just enforce that rather than introducing something that means a club with 30,000 paying fans is only allowed to offer the same wages as a club with 2,000

But the point you are making doesn't answer the point I am making.

I think it's really clear that a flat wage cap would be a) wrong (for the reasons you give) and b) disastrous for us (especially if existing commitments like Grigg, McGeady, Oviedo, and Cattermole are taken into account.

My issue is that he now needs to get the votes to stop this madness. The League 1 teams have already shown that they will throw fairness and football out of the window to protect their own interests.

So jumping and down and saying 'we don't want a level playing field' is just inviting most of the Division to say 'screw you, we'll have some of that, if we can compete on a level playing field with the likes of SAFC'.

 

[stevo]

Another fair point, if they want a wage cap it should be in every league (or at least championship down if they can't include the Premier League). A cap would have to work for the smallest clubs, so no one would be able to offer even half decent wages in this league. So everyone who is half decent will choose to sit on the bench in the championship rather than coming to this league (unless a team is prepared to spend a hell of a percentage of their allowance on them).

For me that makes the league worse, and makes the jump from league one to championship ridiculously hard to make. It's a ridiculous idea and I can't think of one benefit of it.

Exactly marra,and how long are they gonna give us to get down to that level.I think it would take us a few seasons i reckon.Makes it absolutely critical that we get promoted the coming season.

 

[10 Gary Rowells]

To be fair I think his point is reasonable - you can argue for a flat salary cap from the perspective of egalitarianism, but don't pretend it's anything to do with sustainability because that doesn't make much sense for clubs with much greater income.

Question for anyone that knows more about the proposals, if they cap these outgoings in this way and the predictable result is a surplus building up in the club's coffers a) what's to stop it being used on/resulting in bigger transfer fees and b) what's to stop fatcat owners just extracting that surplus from the club?

There will always be ways round it.

 

[scott934]

If a flat cap came in at £2.5m per year, wouldn't SAFC become a cash cow, since our income is typically way higher? Wouldn't that incentivise owners of SAFC to not achieve promotion?

 

[Johnnyh]

He's absolutely right. The idea of a wage cap is supposed to be to keep teams afloat, to ensure they are sustainable. But it doesn't do that. If one club has 20 times the turnover of another, a flat wage cap isn't ensuring both can survive, its just actively penalising the club that could comfortably, safely, spend more on wages. A limit as a percentage of turnover is much fairer if the aim is the survival of the clubs. Of course, with SCMP they already seem to have that, so why don't they just enforce that rather than introducing something that means a club with 30,000 paying fans is only allowed to offer the same wages as a club with 2,000

Totally agree. Surely the wage cap has to be a percentage of your turnover. I would expect this is the way they implement it.

 

[thornton15]

Does anyone know if Catts/Oviedo and everyone else we paid off are still classed as part of our wage structure? If so, we’ll be knackered and no wonder we’re opposing this.

 

[Guinness Guzzler]

But the point you are making doesn't answer the point I am making.

I think it's really clear that a flat wage cap would be a) wrong (for the reasons you give) and b) disastrous for us (especially if existing commitments like Grigg, McGeady, Oviedo, and Cattermole are taken into account.

My issue is that he now needs to get the votes to stop this madness. The League 1 teams have already shown that they will throw fairness and football out of the window to protect their own interests.

So jumping and down and saying 'we don't want a level playing field' is just inviting most of the Division to say 'screw you, we'll have some of that, if we can compete on a level playing field with the likes of SAFC'.

To be fair, I think they'll vote for what suits them regardless of what Rodwell says, so I'm not sure if makes a great deal of difference. What he does need to be doing though is making the case for a grace period. Teams are already signing players for next season, or renewing their contracts. Even in a league with relatively short contracts there will be lots of players with a year or two to run on them. You simply can't (fairly) say "it's coming in and it starts now". In theory we'd likely need to try and get a load of our players to take wage cuts (which they won't do) or we'd need to sell them. At least a 12 month grace period should be granted, and then they should do everything they can to actually get us up this season

Totally agree. Surely the wage cap has to be a percentage of your turnover. I would expect this is the way they implement it.

Like I say though, the issue is that SCMP already does that, they've literally got the right solution already in place, I just can't understand it!

 

[Tony_Montana1981]

I think this is short sighted and small time on our part, we shouldn’t need to overspend to attract players for this level to come here, players should be dying to play in our facilities and represent a club with such a rich history.

Players dont care about our history man. Not one single bit. There isnt an active professional footballer who was alive last time we won anything.

 

[safcpauluk]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1278644838779326464

If it goes to a vote like how they ended the season its bound to happen to us again!

 

[heroesof73]

Need a Flat Cap and a Whippet

 

[threepenny bits]

We should continue to do what we've done for years, just let every fkr rip us off.

 

[Black Cat Gypsy]

A salary cap of £2.5m a year is ridiculous. It should be reduce to maybe 50% of turnover or something like that.

 

[Eggman]

With a salary cap, your average League One player won’t have the incentive of promotion because he’ll immediately be out of his depth and out of a job if his team goes up.

Smacks of remaining mediocre.

There has got to be some kind of reward for being better than the rest

 

[Swindon On Tour]

Swindon performed superbly last season on a £1.8 million budget.
Wellens reckons he can assemble a promotion challenging team with a budget of £2.5 million. May need two seasons though.
All in favour of sustainability at Swindon following our recent history.
You have to play the loan market well though to make an impact in the lower leagues.

 

[mikemanc]

Does anyone know if Catts/Oviedo and everyone else we paid off are still classed as part of our wage structure? If so, we’ll be knackered and no wonder we’re opposing this.

Probably but there'd have to a period of adoption where you'd be able to get exemptions for existing contracts. They'd have the same problem every year when 3 clubs drop out of the championship and have contracted players being paid more than £2.5m between them.

 

[Grumpy Old Man]

Swindon performed superbly last season on a £1.8 million budget.
Wellens reckons he can assemble a promotion challenging team with a budget of £2.5 million. May need two seasons though.
All in favour of sustainability at Swindon following our recent history.
You have to play the loan market well though to make an impact in the lower leagues.

You'd have been over the proposed L2 salary cap of £1.25m. And what happens when you get promoted with a team on a total of £2.5m, and then you hit the Championship?

 

[Mexico]

Players dont care about our history man. Not one single bit. There isnt an active professional footballer who was alive last time we won anything.

That is exactly the point I was making, I’m all for a level playing field financially.

 

[Guinness Guzzler]

Swindon performed superbly last season on a £1.8 million budget.
Wellens reckons he can assemble a promotion challenging team with a budget of £2.5 million. May need two seasons though.
All in favour of sustainability at Swindon following our recent history.
You have to play the loan market well though to make an impact in the lower leagues.

Thats fine, if your club wants to be sustainable then a £2.5m wage budget makes sense (although I think they're talking about the cap being much lower). But if we get about £7m in gate receipts, and wages are by far the biggest expense we have, surely we should be allowed to go above that should we so wish? All for a limit as % of turnover to protect clubs, but we can be sustainable whilst spending a lot more than clubs with much lower turnover. It makes absolutely no sense to have a set limit, especially when it has to be based on the club with the lowest turnover if its going to protect every club

You'd have been over the proposed L2 salary cap of £1.25m. And what happens when you get promoted with a team on a total of £2.5m, and then you hit the Championship?

I'm assuming all we could do to benefit from our turnover would be to offer players massive promotion bonuses, the better players might come here if they know they double their wages on promotion whereas Accrington wouldn't be able to afford to offer it.

 

[Grumpy Old Man]

Thats fine, if your club wants to be sustainable then a £2.5m wage budget makes sense (although I think they're talking about the cap being much lower). But if we get about £7m in gate receipts, and wages are by far the biggest expense we have, surely we should be allowed to go above that should we so wish? All for a limit as % of turnover to protect clubs, but we can be sustainable whilst spending a lot more than clubs with much lower turnover. It makes absolutely no sense to have a set limit, especially when it has to be based on the club with the lowest turnover if its going to protect every club


I'm assuming all we could do to benefit from our turnover would be to offer players massive promotion bonuses, the better players might come here if they know they double their wages on promotion whereas Accrington wouldn't be able to afford to offer it.

Plus a massive uplift in basic on promotion. To be fair, I think most of the players have that already. I think Donald said the wage bill would rise by 30% after promotion.