West Ham have astonishingly found themselves with a lower wage bill than last season despite a spending spree during the summer transfer window. Even more incredible is the fact that the Hammers will still be under last season’s threshold, even if the club adds to the squad with a free transfer as expected.
The addition of nine players has added around £605,000 per week to the West Ham wage bill, or £31.5 million over the course of a whole season.
The departures of Kalvin Phillips, Said Benrahma, Flynn Downes, Thilo Kehrer, Ben Johnson, Angelo Ogbonna, Nathan Trott, Divin Mubama, and Anang have saved around £404,000 per week, or £21 million over a season.
The outbound loans of Zouma, Ward-Prowse, Aguerd, and Cornet will save an additional £277,000 per week, or £14.5 million this season.
Our net position should be around £4 million less than last season, without factoring in any free agents that could sign, leaving around £77,000 per week to match last season’s wage bill.
These are impressive figures given the huge wages allocated to the likes of Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who was on a hefty wage at Manchester United. It should also be noted that the club is subsidising some of the wages for players who are currently out on loan, which became a necessity as the deadline day approached.
Significantly improving and upgrading the quality of our squad at the same time is a good trick.
You’ve forgot to include loan fees. Ward-Prowse, Aguerd and Cornet will be earning us money in loan fees.
They are also being amortised by a year puts their values down on the books. Should they perform well then their sale values may increase.
Their sale values would be unlikely to increase if they stayed with us due to lack of game time.
It’s more of a trick than appears at first glance.
Thanks John and the loan fees will certainly help.
I’m sure I’m not alone in struggling to understand how the new profit and sustainability rules work particularly in our club’s case. Really appreciate your insights on this as we see these terms used a lot but must admit I do get confused by them. Would love to see a feature on C&H explaining this and some of the terms used. Is this something that has appeared before as an updated article would be really helpful?
There was an article a couple of weeks back on PSR, if you look back through the articles you should find it.
The wage bill being down after the comings and goings is a good thing as there’s also a regulation that caps wages to 75% of revenue. If we were within that before the window then we certainly are now.
Thanks John, much appreciated. Just found the article which has made things much clearer.
For anyone else who may be confused by the PSR rules and how this affects us here’s the link https://www.claretandhugh.info/financial-perspective-huge-report/
Here you go https://www.claretandhugh.info/profit-and-sustainability-rules-i-you-did-ask/