Hammers and the wages dilemma

CandH Opinion

by Hugh Southon

There’s been a lot of talk about the wage bill over the last week as the Hammers look to make several new signings.

It’s understandable the board aim to be sensible and involve themselves in ‘good housekeeping.’

It’s equally understandable the fans are screaming for more and more money to be spent – it’s par for the course! Twas ever thus!

We all know what happens on our household budgets when we spend crazily but we all divorce ourselves from the effects when it happens to someone of something else.

But we shouldn’t when considering our football club – one of the biggest things by far in our lives. Remember Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday, Wolves, Bolton, Middlesbrough, Nottingham Forest Coventry City and many others!

It’s one of the facts of Premier League life that wages and league position are bound together almost as a single entity.

Wages outlay and league position reflect each other by and large. At the last count our players were the 14th highest paid in the league – our finishing position was 13th!

Whether we want to consider FFP or not – and that isn’t the point of this discussion– that fact is that it exists and we are nowhere near the top table when looking at the personal terms we can afford pay players.

Thus it follows we need to resign ourselves to the fact that our league position is always likely to be reflected in the league table. It’s just a fact of life.

Calling for new owners with deeper pockets is every fan’s right but we need to cast our minds back to 2010 when the current owners took over.

There really was no other serious buyer after the Icelandic exercise which had put us as close to the knackers yard as it’s possible to get.

We’re a great club with an amazing history but in financial terms we were a car crash happening in slow motion and there were only two realistic buyers.

Why? Because we had gone down a reckless spending road which some fans want us to revisit.

Do we want more of the same? – I certainly don’t.

I want a stable club that goes to the OS (another discussion guys) debt free ready to reap the financial rewards along with the potential it releases for future growth.

In a game that demands instant answers and immediate results patience is always at a premium but right at this moment that’s what every one of us needs to show.

We can all scream as loudly as we like – sadly it will make no difference to what cash is available

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