Curse Of Premature Speculation

The maxim that the wise man speaks when he has something to say, the fool when he has to say something has always seemed to apply most appropriately to football pundits and journalists. If you earn your living having to give an opinion and simply have to say something for the live broadcast or the next press edition then understandably you’re going to struggle at times to come up with something worth saying. With this in mind it’s worth questioning what is often portrayed as fact, born of this need, which is then taken up as received wisdom.

Published in the Telegraph back in September of last year an article by Jeremy Wilson, not the most foolish of journos it should be said, under a headline announcing that Arsenal’s wage bill had moved ahead of Chelsea’s for the first time, may perhaps fall into this category of needing to say something. It certainly seemed to go much too far in presenting speculation as fact. Speculating that Arsenal’s wage bill for this season would be some £180m may not turn out to be that foolish but claiming as it did that Chelsea’s wage bill at £176m had remained much the same since 2012-2013 without any facts to support it seemed so.

Wilson was quite definite in claiming … the Telegraph can reveal that this figure has stayed virtually static over the past two years … and suggested this was a sign of financial realism impacting on Chelsea’s finances. Chelsea have recently published their full accounts for the last financial year, that’s the one before that upon which Wilson was speculating, and lo and behold they spent a touch over £190m compared to our £166m. It’s reasonable to assume that their wages for this current year will also increase leaving him further ahead still of the £180m guesstimate made for our current year. That Wilson was able to publish an unsubstantiated article widely repeated elsewhere as though it were fact should give fair warning to those inclined to take such propositions at face value.

Wilson’s article was probably intended to give the impression that Chelsea were voluntarily embracing FFP rather than indicate profligacy on Arsenal’s part though many, some Arsenal bloggers prominent amongst them, enthusiastically used the bogus claim to suggest incompetence in that Arsenal were now spending more than Chelsea but not matching their achievements. That isn’t yet the case and it is unlikely to be so at least for another couple of seasons but the constraints of FFP should eventually weigh more heavily on all clubs not yet working within genuinely self sustaining revenues.

The reality is that FFP is a ball and chain and not a guillotine. It will only have a gradual effect in helping to create a more even playing field for self sustaining clubs than has existed over the last 10 years. Chelsea proudly announced that they have made their first significant profit since Abramovich took control though this is primarily as a consequence of player sales. In fact they’ve been quite cute in stockpiling players before FFP had inhibited them and currently have some 26 players out on loan. In 2011 they reported a playing staff of 69 but by 2013 this had grown to 95. It has since dropped slightly to 89 in the 2014 figures.

There appears to have been a benefit in investing heavily in players prior to full implementation of FFP. For example Chelsea spent an impressive £19m signing a then 18 year old Lukaku in 2011 before selling him to Everton, with just 206 minutes of PL playing time in a Chelsea shirt, for a reported £28m. This appears to show a £9m profit but in fact as two thirds of his initial transfer fee would have been amortised while on loan at West Brom and Everton, the book profit accrued in the current financial year when permanently transferred is some £23m. With players like Ryan Bertrand, Van Ginkel, Bamford, Marin et c., they can be expected to cash in on the stockpile built on spending in previous years in much the same way to balance their books for a while longer before the spending constraints of FFP have a more telling impact.

This doesn’t breach FFP rules currently and indeed you can have some regard for their creativity in developing a clever policy to mitigate the short term effects of FFP, but as with Manchester City’s potential to use their US and Australian clubs to spread losses, used in this way the loan system is one that, at the least, bears scrutiny by FFP’s architects. You may well also consider to what degree it is genuinely in the interests of player development.

There may well come a time when our wage bills are still closer to or even above those teams we seek to usurp, and should we achieve that from our own resources we should take some satisfaction from it, but on last published and confirmed figures, rather than speculation, with us at £166m, Chelsea £190m, City £205m and ManU on £215m a greater degree of parity is only slowly beginning to emerge.