As much as i hate to push the "Pato's on a Boat" link down, i'm in need of some footy banter and have a tasty can of worms i just HAD to open. So financial giants Deloitte have published their yearly "08/09 Premiership Team Salary Rankings" and the results are illuminating:
Chelsea 172.09m
UTD 121.08m
Arsenal 101.30m
LFC 90.43m
Newcastle 74.56m
Portsmouth 54.68m
Man City 54.22m
Spurs 52.92m
Villa 50.44m
Everton 44.48m
Several things of note here:
1. This is WAGES, not transfer fees. Since transfer fees go to the club, this is probably a more accurate measure of "ability to attract top talent."
2. clearly, chelsea absolutely blow everyone else out of the water in terms of spending power. it's not just that they spend more money than liverpool, they spend ALMOST DOUBLE what liverpool does. and what does all that money get them? an fa cup and a cozy third in the prem table, behind the mighty reds. lame. what fun it must be to root for a bunch of loaded underachievers, huh sim?! don't worry, we'll still take you on the liverpool side when you want to jump off the flaming blue ship.
3. newcastle. the epic fail they just pooped out gets more impressive every day.
4. arsenal. don't drink the kool-aid kids... for all that talk about "low wage structure" and thriftiness, they manage to blow 11m MORE than liverpool and still can't even get a sniff of silverware. overpriced, underachieving kids are just as lame as overpriced, underachieving veterans, just with less back hair.
5. couldn't find italy or spain, but i'm curious how a real madrid might slot in here...
CONCLUSION:
Clearly, the playing field is not level. Whether or not that's a bad thing is a different debate for a different day, but the evidence is irrefutable. Compared to the rest of the big four, liverpool is a significant underdog before a ball is even kicked. You may not like to hear liverpool fans bitching about not having the spending power of chelsea or manU (and you're probably right), but it's simply not true that the "the big clubs are all basically the same".
so bring it! and roll on 09/10 already!
++colazo
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2 comments:
And because I am a nerd, I took these wages in poungs and divided them by the final table position of each team. Cheers to Everton (blah) and Villa for best bang for the buck. Jeers to some others...
Everton 2.8
Villa 3.4
Spurs 4.1
Liverpool 4.8
Man City 4.9
Arsenal 6.0
Man U 6.1
Portsmouth 7.8
Chelsea 9.6
Newcastle 24.9
Couple of thoughts:
1) Liverpool's "Results per Pound" is even more notable than the absolute figures from Deloitte, as is Chelsea's embarassment. The only team that performed more poorly per pound was Newcastle...a championship division tea.
2) Liverpool was half of the Results per Pound as Chelsea, doubled them, and finished ahead of them.
3) Maybe Chelsea can spend even more and earn 4th next year...Ancelotti says it is possible.
Note: "Results per Pound" is team wages divided by table position, where 1st = 20, 2nd=19, 3rd=18, etc.
Please...
I did some research too. Transfer fees have got to be part of the conversation, especially when we have no way of knowing what the wage structure is at any club for any player. For example, Chelsea has a big ballon in salary for a guy like Cole, so this years wages look hugh, while LFC may be in the first year of many contracts with big wage baloons built in down the road (a common practice...no idea if that is true in this case).
Here's the bottom line: since summer 2007, Liverpool has spent 52.5 million more in transfer fees than Chelsea! If you add that to the numbers gray crunched, it changes the situation pretty drastically. Chelsea has chosen to spend $ on wages, LFC chose to bring in fresh talent. Either way, both spent a metric ton of money.
Also, these sorts of conversations are always goofy because they ignore injury. If gerrard and torres had been healthy all year, would they have beaten Man U? I think so. However, if Chelsea had not lost Drogba, Essien, Carvalho, And Joe Cole for large chunks of the season, couldn't they have done more? Likely.
All I know is all 4 big teams spend big money. We all know big money does not = winning (see the Yankees, rangers, etc), but obviously it helps.
I don't think it's very fair to try to compare a single season's wages to that same seasons result. Too many intangibles. It would be fair to look at $ spent over time, and obviously Chelsea wins that comparison. Yes they have spent more in the last 5 years or so...how many trophies have they collected in that time?
I bet if we did THAT alanysis, Chelsea would look way better than Liverpool for return on dollars spent.
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