31 Comments

The Wage Debate and especially in comparison to Spurs

We have all said that part of the problem is that the wages are so much larger for us than Spurs at £10m per year extra yet our revenue is some £35m per year lower. Any novice accountant can tell you that this is a major problem for us but lets look at the figures in detail as they both end May/June 2009 and thus cover the same time period.

  • Total wage bill is
  • (includes pension and social costs, in both cases 10% of total)

      Villa – £70,577,000

      Spurs – £60,468,000

      the £10m gap

    • Total Number of Employees

      Villa – Total – 1,398
      Full – 445
      Part – 953

      Spurs – Total – 836
      Full – 286
      Part -550

    • Playing and Football staff

      Villa – 134
      Spurs – 148

    • Other staff

      Villa – 311
      Spurs – 138

      If we ignore the massive discrepancy in Full Time and Part Staff we do have a massive extra number of Full time staff especially in the commercial, community project and admin but on the playing side (which is of course when the extra really matters) Spurs have 10 more.

      Frankly this does not make sense, at least to me, we are two similar sized clubs why would we have so many extra full time staff if we said say the extra average just £20k a year that is an extra £3.1m on our bill

      So we come to the playing and football support staff. This is obviously the difficult bit to work out and when you look at who played in the 2008-09 season without knowing the exact salary of each player to me it is not obvious where the extra £7m (estimate) for us comes from, especially as they had Bent, Bentley, Woodgate and Keane for half a season all reckoned to be on more or the same as Carew and Young our supposed two highest wage earners with Heskey for 4 months.

      the clue could be that they had quite a few players they brought reasonably cheap when young.

      Dawson
      Huddlestone
      Assou-Ekotto
      Lennon

      Who would have come in on much cheaper wages a few seasons earlier and started to grow up when Redknapp joined Spurs. Some of these have now had pay rises, so the comparsions for the next set of accounts covering 2009-10 may be much closer than these. Remember we did have to buy a lot of our players in as few youngsters (and thus cheaper) were ready to play and as I said Spurs’s ones they brought in young were starting to mature.

      When you look at the wages from 2009 remember these do not include Dunne, Warnock, Collins with only Barry going out. So for me it is all about wages not transfer fees and once we get the wages down a bit we can spend on new players, simple economics.

      I may be warbling on but interested in others thoughts.

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      31 comments on “The Wage Debate and especially in comparison to Spurs

      1. You are aware that spurs don’t run a reserve team for a start, so theres a pool of players/future talent they don’t have or pay for.

        Secondly, /i don’t recall much, if any fanfare about academys. They don’t promote as much young talent,which is indrectly putting into the game.

        Also, historically, Villa Park used otearn additional matchday revenue from semi finals due to location and size, which WHL has rarely done.

      2. juju, I am aware of that but their squad is still bigger than ours.

        Their academy is well reknown as glaston on VT keeps reminding us !

      3. Have you, or someone else made these figures up?
        Or have you got evidence that these are correct?
        Just wondering.

      4. did you read the post, the figures are from both clubs Annual reports

        Spurs available on their website, Villa’s or actually RAL’s available from Companies house, spend a £1 and see.

      5. Dave, if you ever read this post, you can disappear off to H&V repeat the nonsense you just have knowing I can never reply

        yet strange you abuse me on there but at the Wellington last season you were all pally with me and others have totally understood what I have said, shame you can not.

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