QPR will back the wage cap crusade
QPR chief executive Lee Hoos has backed calls for a wage cap in the Football League in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Leagues One and Two have discussed caps as low as £2.5million and £1.25m respectively with the crisis having a monumental impact on the finances of clubs down the football pyramid. The Championship are likely to hold discussions on their own spending limit.
‘I would be a fan of wage cap not to level the playing field but as a way to get hold of finances,’ says Hoos, who previously worked in the Premier League with Burnley. ‘There are two ways to do it, the hard cap where you accept it will be X amount or the soft cap where it’s based on revenue.
‘Leeds are a huge club and I don’t begrudge them spending more than me. It would have to be fair enough for the top clubs. But just because you make a wage cap, doesn’t mean you have to go to that number.
‘Right now we need to sort out the restart before we talk about restructuring for the greater good of football. But though you hate to use the word opportunity within the crisis, this could be a point to reassess.’
QPR are a case in point. In more profligate years, before Hoos and director of football Les Ferdinand were in charge, their wage bill soared to £78m in the Premier League and remained at £75m when relegated, despite income dropping to £38m. Now their wage bill is below £20m.
‘Les and the board have done a great job bringing salaries under control and right now we’re in a good situation,’ said Hoos.
‘We want this to be a sustainable club and this situation proves why we don’t want to rely on external funding. This is the emergency time, when you might need owners to fund, but the rest of the time clubs should be funding themselves.
‘I have a theory on wage caps. I think clubs would still end up with the same players. All you’re doing is paying what you should be paying, rather than over-inflating. The real tough one is what do you do with clubs relegated from the Premier League? Even with them reducing their wages it’s still a massive undertaking [to get wages down].’
Even a cautious club, such as Huddersfield, had a wage bill of £64m in the Premier League, which is extraordinarily low and eventually saw them relegated. With some suggesting that a Championship wage cap should be as low as £20m a year, the gulf between the top two tiers looks unbridgeable.
Hoos added: ‘The logical way is for the Championship to be more aligned to the Premier League and to share some of the revenue with them, so there’s not such a drop off when you get relegated and it’s not so financially drastic — working closer together, like Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2.
‘The problem is, if you talk about Premier League 2 it sounds like a breakaway. But I’m just talking about the Championship being more closely aligned to the Premier League.
‘The question is how do we maximise the revenue and its distribution so it’s helping both competitions and League One and League Two as well?’ Currently, the Premier League bridges the chasm with parachute payments, worth around £40m a season.
Hoos was the most vocal critic of the announcement last week of a Championship restart on June 20. Now it is understood the schedule is to be eased with a one-week recovery to prevent injuries after the first games. A relieved Hoos added: ‘We can work with it if we have a recovery period.’