Wage capping has been suggested (and even supported by a Mr. J. Carragher of Liverpool) but it’s unlikely this would get through employment laws, so what other options are available? 

Apparently the Football League has a rule in place saying that any club who spends more than a certain percentage of their turnover on salaries is liable to be penalised the following year (I assume this means they’d get a points deduction as fining them would surely just make the problem worse?). The trouble with that is that if you give someone a contract for a number of years, over that period the income could have dried up and a contract that was affordable then isn’t now, breaking that percentage threshold. To overcome this, the only option would appear to be one year contracts, which just plays into the hands of the larger clubs who could cherry pick the best players year after year. 

The idea of only allowing clubs to spend a certain percentage of turnover on wages is a good one, but how do you ensure the club can keep within the boundaries yet still be able to offer players long-term contracts? 

Most income streams in football vary week-on-week, month-on-month - the obvious being ticket sales but also merchandising, prize money, programme and food sales etc. but there are some which are stable over the course of a season, mainly the money for TV rights, so you could use the stable sources of income to set a basic wage and supplement it with bonuses from the variable ones without ever breaking the threshold. 

When the money from the TV rights deal arrives, the percentage that can be used for salaries is set aside, split up into twelve months, and then each month divided equally amongst each current member of the squad as basic pay. As each club in each league receives the same amount of basic TV money it should mean the basic wage at every club in the same league should be pretty much the same, with any differences only being caused by the size of the squad each club decides to have. The great thing about this is it stops any one team from employing a ridiculously large squad, because the money would be split up between more people, the players would earn less and they wouldn’t be happy.

The superstars would throw a bit of a tantrum at this, surround the PFA chairman and hurl abuse at him (as they tend to do when things don’t go their way), but it isn’t fair that they should earn the same as an academy graduate, so who’d give them extra? Well it wouldn’t Howard from the Halifax that’s for sure, but the gate receipts could be used for bonuses. The ticket sales for each match are divided up amongst the matchday squad; possibly even depending on the amount of time they spent on the pitch to make it fairer. Pay-as-you-play. The more minutes/games you play, the more you earn. If you get sent off, you lose the extra pay for the remainder of that game and the subsequent ones you miss through suspension. It’s an incentive to get in the team, not cry off to the physio at the slightest knock and to be disciplined on the pitch.

The sales of programmes/food sold at the game could be added to this as well, and any prize money could be split up between the players depending on how much time they’ve spent on the pitch in that competition.

Merchandise could be split up equally between the players each month, although income from items that just have specific player(s) on could be allocated to that player(s) specifically, helping the ‘stars’ maintain higher earnings over the rest of the squad.

This should also mean that the talent is spread more widely rather than concentrated in the top few clubs, as a player could earn more being a star in a smaller team by playing more and selling personal merchandise than he would as a squad player playing for a top team, making the league more competitive and less of a foregone conclusion.

The big clubs wouldn’t be too upset though because they’d still be able to offer the very best players the best money overall, due to their higher attendances, more TV appearances and higher merchandise sales de to a larger fan base, but they’d find it difficult to keep international standard players on the bench because not playing would seriously affect their earnings.

The players themselves would be relatively happy because there wouldn’t be a cap on their wages – if the club earn it so can they – although their wages would be more open to fluctuations and the fans/chairmen/FA are happy because it safeguards the future of the clubs.

So Burf (or anyone else who wants to comment), what do you reckon to that one?

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