Clubs to consider salary cap

English Football League clubs have discussed introducing salary caps after the penalty imposed on Saracens last month for breaching Premiership Rugby’s wage limit.

Rick Parry, the new EFL chairman, said the decision to dock 35 points from rugby’s English and European champions – and fine them £5.4million – had been monitored by sides who doubted the enforceability of such sanctions.

The demise of Bury and plight of several other EFL clubs had provoked calls for a salary cap and the governing body revealed yesterday it had set up a working group of Championship clubs to review the current financial rules.

Existing Championship regulations govern overall losses rather than expenditure, unlike those for League One and League Two, which ban sides from spending more than a certain percentage of their turnover on wages.

On a competition-wide salary cap, Parry said: “Saracens’ decision says, ‘Well it must be lawful because it is something they have enforced’. We always felt it was something that couldn’t be explored. I’ve heard clubs say maybe what we have is too complex and we should concentrate on the issue we are all concerned about, which is wage costs – but to say that’s the majority view or something likely to happen is way off the mark.”

Parry also confirmed new rules to punish clubs for failing to pay wages were under consideration after Macclesfield became the latest side to do so, forcing the postponement of their match against Crewe Alexandra last Saturday.

“There’s an attitude where if people don’t pay wages on time, they need to be punished because those who are doing it the right way need to be supported,” he said.