Vital Swansea News

£20m Saved On Wages This Summer? Let’s Look At The Numbers

|
Image for £20m Saved On Wages This Summer? Let’s Look At The Numbers

With Premier League money no longer our main source of income, Swansea City’s main priority this Summer was to raise significant cash to fill the gap left behind by that and so far they’ve certainly done that. As well as transfer fee profits of around £40m, we also thought we’d take a look at the money we could save this year from the wage bill.

Our wage bill in 2016/17 for the entire club – including all staff – was £99m as confirmed via the company accounts. You’d imagine that it probably increased slightly last season, as it’s gone up every season ever since we were promoted to the Premier League in 2011.

The TV money we received thanks to being in the Premier League pretty much covered that entire wage bill. But with a number of higher earners being sold this Summer and others going out on loan or returning to their parent clubs after loan, that wage bill will have been reduced.

We’ve no idea what the players earn on a weekly basis, but for a wage bill of £99m that will include office staff and coaches etc. our playing staff will still make up a large majority of that and therefore the average player wage is likely to be in the £35,000 mark.

Here’s our guess at a breakdown of where we’ll save on wages this season:

Player Assuming Weekly Wage Annual Saving
Mawson £15,000.00 £780,000.00
Fabianski £60,000.00 £3,120,000.00
Fernandez £60,000.00 £3,120,000.00
Clucas £50,000.00 £2,600,000.00
Mesa £50,000.00 £2,600,000.00
Bartley £20,000.00 £1,040,000.00
Andre Ayew £70,000.00 £3,640,000.00
Jordan Ayew £50,000.00 £2,600,000.00
Amat £25,000.00 £1,300,000.00
Ki £60,000.00 £3,120,000.00
£23,920,000.00
Players Not Included
Leon Britton
Angel Rangel
Renato Sanches (loan)
Tammy Abraham (loan)
Borja Baston

It’s worth bearing in mind here that we’ve not included Leon Britton, Angel Rangel and Borja Baston as well as loaned duo Tammy Abraham and Renato Sanches. Even if we’re overestimated the above figures, you’d still expect the players mentioned to make it up to around a £20m reduction off the wage bill in 2018/19.

For argument’s sake then, our wage bill could possibly now be around £80m and £50m will be received in parachute payments. Let’s not forget the £40m profit we’ve made in transfer fees also this Summer and you’ve bridged that £30m with an extra £10m to spare.

It’s worth mentioning as well that our wage bill in our final year in the Championship before Premier League promotion was £17.4m. That’s seven years ago so you can consider inflation and natural increases where TV money has slightly increased as well as ticket prices etc. so you then have to consider what is the club’s target wage bill for Championship football? Again, I can only guess that it could be around £25m? Any higher and we’d have to rely on selling a player asset every single Summer to cover it as we have to remember that the year after next, our final parachute payment is only around £15m.

You might then think – ok great – a £10m extra!?

If only it was that easy. But these high wage bill problems won’t be sorted this Summer alone. The two Ayew brothers are still on our books (or will be next year after their season-long loans) and we’re also paying big money for Wilfried Bony. You’ve also got to consider next year and the year after. We won’t be getting another £50m in parachute payments and you can expect more cost-cutting. I’d imagine that our new signings this Summer have come in on pennies compared to what the likes of Andre Ayew and Wilfried Bony are earning here.

There’ll be more cutting back next year, more wages will need to be wiped off our bill and a few more players will be out of contract which we’ll have to consider as well.

But while we’ve had to cut back massively, there’s still no excuse for a lack of replacements coming in, we managed to sign a few attacking players on low fees and I assume low wages, and we were all hoping the same would happen with defensive players too.

Share this article

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *