Hammers Wage bill is near maximum limit

Sources close to West Ham have revealed to ClaretandHugh that the players annual wage bill has reached £57m this summer leaving just £1m in wages before this season’s Premier League Financial Fair Play limit is reached. West Ham are unlikely to have increased retail or commercial income last season after a bumper season before so £58m is likely to be the upper limit this season to comply within the rules.

The release of Joe Cole, Jack Collison, Alou Diarra and George McCartney released around £7m off the wage bill while the end of loans for Roger Johnson, Pablo Armero, Antonio Nocerino and Marco Borriello is thought to have released the equivalent of another £3m off  the wage bill. 

The seven new Hammers signings have added a combined weekly wage including employers national insurance of around £244,000 adding over £12.4m to wage bill.

Although the Financial Fair Play  limit was £54m last season West Ham actually had more than £61m available after Commercial revenue rose from £7.9m to £13.9m and retail sales were up from £4.8m to £6m in our first season back in the Premier League. Under Premier League FFP rules this extra commercial revenue gave the club another £7.2m to spend last season if they wanted to.

The remaining £1m this season could be used as £19k per week or £38k per week as part of a six month loan, any outbound players sold would also release further wages from the wage limit.