How Wisely Did Your Club Spend Its Money?

Now its no secret that in modern day football cash is king. It seems that every winner of The Premiership from Blackburn Rovers to Manchester City has been accused of buying the title.

An article on Sporting Intelligence appears to highlight the obvious fact that without financial riches success in England’s top division is impossible.

Sporting Intelligence cite that of the 66 post-war seasons 45 of the title Winners have been clubs with an attendance ranking amongst the league’s 3 largest. The argument being that the clubs with the largest crowds generate the most revenue resulting in the largest incomes and therefore the biggest financial clout when it comes to purchase players and paying the highest wages.

However what this view of the key to financial power fails to account for is the effect of television revenue deals which contribute significantly to Premiership team’s revenue and also the possibility of a club simply being bank rolled by a wealthy investor such as Jack Walker at Blackburn or Roman Abramovich at Chelsea.

In both cases clubs who did not have average crowd sizes ranking in the league’s biggest three still managed beat their rivals when it came to Transfer fees and wages.

Sporting Intelligence’s statistics only take into account up until the end of the 2010-11 season but it is still interesting to consider which clubs are getting value for the money they are spending on players wages and who isn’t seeing a return on their investment.

Despite spending an average of £1.2 million per player per year less than their local rivals Manchester City United still managed to win the league. Unsurprisingly Liverpool appear to be amongst the worst offenders when it comes to turning money spent into points.

Despite their players receiving nearly a million pound more on average each season than Spurs Liverpool still finished behind the London Club and managed only four more points than Everton despite their average player earnings being twice that of the Toffees.

The correlation between average players wages and League position allows us one gauge of the ability of a manager. England Manger Roy Hodgson offered his Chairman superb value for money, despite only two clubs spending less money on average player wages than The Baggies the residents of The Hawthorns managed to finish in 11th place. Unfortunately for Roy that won’t count for anything in the coming weeks.