Six straight away losses and the Premier League’s lowest wage budget hindering Cardiff City’s attempt to defy the odds.
Sunday December 16, 2018
by The other Bob Wilson aka Paul Evans
I had the car radio on last night listening to Radio 5’s weekend football preview programme and when they got around to talking about Cardiff City, it was said that our wage budget for the season was the lowest in the Premier League – not just that, ours is £20 million less than anyone else’s.
That first bit of information doesn’t come as a surprise to me, but the second one does because it really does bring home the self inflicted disadvantage we are operating under – £20 million would pay for a five year contract for a player on £300k a month and still have a couple of million left over or four four year contracts for someone on £100k a month. More realistically for our position, a player on, say, £40k a month for a three year contract would cost us £1,440,000, so four players on contracts like that would only use up just over a quarter of that £20 million.
Of course, there would be transfer and signing on fees etc. to consider, but we’re talking about wages only here – it really does bring home the size of the task that has been imposed on Neil Warnock and I think it is only right that defeats like our sixth consecutive away loss, by 3-2 at Watford today, need to be assessed in that context.
I’ve said a few times this season that I’m reluctant to be critical of the level of spending by the club over the summer because of Vincent Tan’s decision to convert nearly £70 million of club debt into equity and, although it’s harder to maintain such a stance when you hear things like those wage budget figures, I’m going to stick to that line of thinking.
I’ve always thought that the potential was there for an increased level of spending which would still come up well short of the sort of outlay we saw in 2013 when we were signing the likes of Andreas Cornelius, Gary Medel and Steven Caulker. However, if Mr Tan does not feel he can authorise additional spending then I suppose supporters should remember that he must have ploughed in the region of £200 million into the club now when you consider things like the interest payments on loans he has waived.
Nevertheless, assuming the sort of funding available to Neil Warnock in January is along similar lines to what we’ve seen since our latest promotion, then I can only assume a couple of things – first, Mr Tan must be aware of the strong possibility (actually, it’s more appropriate to say likelihood) that we are going to be relegated this season and, second, that he is content to let this happen.
My reaction to today’s defeat is almost contradictory, because, on the one hand, it could be seen as all very predictable, but I also couldn’t help thinking that it throws up questions about our attitude when we play away from home.
We’ve now lost at Watford and West Ham after a run of four away matches against sides in the top third of the division. These last two were supposed to be the easier, potentially winnable, games where we might be able to make our away record look more acceptable.
West Ham and Watford are now in that middle third of the table and this, for me, is the reason why our visits to them were seen by some, like myself, as offering the potential to record our first away point(s) since we drew at Huddersfield in August, but how realistic was that really?
Even before we get to our “meagre” wage budget, West Ham spent something like four times as much as us in transfer fees in the summer and you only have to have a quick scan of the their squad list to become convinced that it is better than ours. Realistically, West Ham were always going to improve on their sluggish start to the season and, with four straight wins behind them now, their league position (the main reason why our game there ten days ago was considered winnable) is a better reflection of the ability within their squad than it was.
The situation is a bit different with Watford whose spending levels since they got promoted have been on the modest side by Premier League standards. Ever since the Pozzo brothers took over at that club, I’ve found it hard to get a handle so to speak on their squad because of the way players move around so much between the clubs that they own.
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