FOOTBALL’S SPENDING APOCALYPSE
Mind-boggling sums blown by Football League clubs revealed Top earners average £1.5m a year Physios, scouts and fitness coaches on £200k plus Even the kitman is on £56k!
THE staggering overspend by clubs in the Football League can be laid bare today after Sportsmail obtained a confidential report into the wages of players and staff.
Explosive figures reveal that the average wage of the best-paid player at each of the Championship clubs this season is a scarcely believable basic of £29,000 a week, adding up to £1.5million a year.
The league’s highest earner is on £68,000 a week — or £3.5m a year — according to the figures provided by the 18 clubs who responded to an EFL survey.
And the mind-boggling sums go beyond the players’ inflated wages. The chief executive at one Midlands-based club picks up £740,000 for a year’s work.
Elsewhere, a head of IT is paid £115,000. At another club, a physio takes home
£191,000, and one chief scout pockets £210,000 a year. At one club, the fitness coach earns an eye-watering £282,000 annually — more than twice as much as the next highest-paid person doing the same job in the Championship. The figures come from the annual survey carried out by the EFL — whose chairman is Rick Parry (right) — titled ‘Staff Salary Benchmarking 2019’. Marked ‘strictly private and confidential’, it was handed to clubs in late November. Many boards use it as a valuable tool when working out how much to pay new recruits. The report highlights a huge gulf between sums spent in the Championship compared to Leagues One and Two where average top player wages take a substantial drop to £4,753 a week (£250k a year) and £2,191 a week (£115k a year) respectively. Some players are on as little as £7,800 a year. The stunning document also provides some context to the desperation among some clubs to get football restarted following the coronavirus outbreak. All of the clubs spending the vast sums have now been without gate receipts and matchday revenue since the sport was suspended on March 13. Amid the current uncertainty, season-ticket revenue for the next campaign — a vital source of income — cannot be relied upon.