RUMOUR - Robert Beric

[SCIAG]

Akpan scored 6 goals in his final half season with Crawley (particularly impressive as he was suspended for 6 matches). Think he'd be good enough for a League One club.

[From Despair To Where?]

That is true but so much depends on what he's earning, what wage the player is prepared to drop down to in order to get 1st team football, what the asking price is and what the interested clubs can afford.

There often seems to be a FM mentality when it comes to shifting on players. It's not as simple as transfer liting a player and having a hoard of clubs interested.

[Ian Royal]

Feels about right for me. I could never sell the ones I wanted to get rid of.

[pea]

How many first teamers have we actually still got on premier league based contracts? Gunter, McCleary, Pograbnyak, can't think of many more, think people are overstating the issue, we've shifted the majority of that team now, plus Bridge and Drenthe

[Platypuss]

HRK, Williams?

[From Despair To Where?]

Considering the average wage in the Championship is £9,000-£10,000 a week, that's 5 players on wages at least double the league average.

It's all rather moot anyway because that would only be an issue if revenue was static but it would appear the Thais have secured some money for investment from somewhere.

I think the spending so far has been sensible and constructive. Going anywhere near Rapid's valuation for Beric would not be sensible IMO, although it's interesting that they are talking about reconsidering if his head was turned. The fact that we could comfortably double his wages may be the best bargaining tool we have as the average wage in the Austrian top flight is about £3,000 a week.

[Nameless]

I'm sure someone with a better mathematical brain than mine can work it out, but surely having possibly 5 players in a squad of 25+ on wages above the divisional average is about what you would expect ?
And it assumes that because we signed players in the Prem they are still on higher than average wages.

[Ian Royal]

HRK, Williams?

So that's five. Then there's Blackman and Akpan... fook knows what they're on, but they were signed when we were in the PL and Anton was making it silly season.

Plus Quinn and McShane will be on a fair wedge, got to be above Championship average for two recent PL players.

If those nine average £15k a week, which seems conservative to me, that's £7m a year. If they average £18k a week, which seems more likely to me then they take up practically the entire £9m parachute payment on their own. With about 15 other first team squad members, backroom staff and Academy lads still to pay.

[Ian Royal]

I'm sure someone with a better mathematical brain than mine can work it out, but surely having possibly 5 players in a squad of 25+ on wages above the divisional average is about what you would expect ?
And it assumes that because we signed players in the Prem they are still on higher than average wages.

The issue isn't how many are above the average, it's by how much they are above it.

I don't know what the standard deviation is for top paid players at non relegated clubs is, but I'm guessing it won't be in the region of 100%.

[West Stand Man]

Considering the average wage in the Championship is £9,000-£10,000 a week, that's 5 players on wages at least double the league average.

It's all rather moot anyway because that would only be an issue if revenue was static but it would appear the Thais have secured some money for investment from somewhere.

I think the spending so far has been sensible and constructive. Going anywhere near Rapid's valuation for Beric would not be sensible IMO, although it's interesting that they are talking about reconsidering if his head was turned. The fact that we could comfortably double his wages may be the best bargaining tool we have as the average wage in the Austrian top flight is about £3,000 a week.

Precisely. The thing about averages (especially the mean) is that few, if any, people will actually be on that rate. To have an average requires some to be above and some to be below. So, if we have 5 players on double the average then we might expect to have quite a few on less than the average too.

[From Despair To Where?]

But that's an average over the whole division. Our wage bill last season was something like the 3rd or 5th highest in the league, well above average. I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of Akpan or Blackman were on something close to the league average.

[Royalwaster]

New story from the Austrian paper 'Der Kurier' suggesting that the Beric deal is pretty close to completion:

http://kurier.at/sport/fussball/rapid-m ... 39.784.950

Effectively saying that the offer for 5.4 million has already been made and that Rapid are waiting to receive the offer in writing; and are already looking for a replacement. Also that the players' agent is already having contract negotiations with Reading .... so looking like this is very much on. Also says that Beric is happy to join Reading - seeing it as a way of attracting interest from the Premier League.

(The article is actually about another Austrian player - Schobesberger - who Brentford apparently bid for about a month ago ...)

[Royalwaster]

PS: it says wages in the Championship are about 10 times higher than in the Austrian league ....

[Ian Royal]

There was an article just over a year ago talking about wages, from when I think we were still in the PL, that claimed the Championship average is the 8th highest in the world.

[From Despair To Where?]

PS: it says wages in the Championship are about 10 times higher than in the Austrian league ....

I know it's only the Daily Mail, but this article suggests 3 times

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2833020/Premier-League-wages-dwarf-Europe-flight-players-England-earning-average-2-3million-year.html

<EDIT> I think that's the article you're referring to Ian.

Still, for me the wages have never been the issue and I think the Central and Eastern European leagues are a good place to scout because of the wage discrepancies. it's been the prospective transfer fee of £3.5m that raises eyebrows for me.

[Nameless]

I'm sure someone with a better mathematical brain than mine can work it out, but surely having possibly 5 players in a squad of 25+ on wages above the divisional average is about what you would expect ?
And it assumes that because we signed players in the Prem they are still on higher than average wages.

The issue isn't how many are above the average, it's by how much they are above it.

I don't know what the standard deviation is for top paid players at non relegated clubs is, but I'm guessing it won't be in the region of 100%.

Surely the real issue is your bit about guessing !

And the fact that there are lots of relevant factors.

Crucially we don't actually know what any of the players are paid, or how their contracts are actually structured. A guess at 20k a week might represent a 5k base wage, then loads of bonuses which may or may not kick in. So if Karajan was on 5k basic plus 10k appearance money his actual take home has been much reduced of late. If Pog is on 20k basic and 10k per goal he's not been collected top whack. If all the players are on win bonuses and league position bonuses they've missed out on a lot of payments.
We're guessing, and drawing conclusions based on our very limited knowledge. Not much else we can do, but you need to be very cautious in assuming we know whether we can afford players given we're not really sure what we are using to judge that, possibly until annual accounts are published and we can take the total wage bill and divvy it up somehow.

[Esteban]

PS: it says wages in the Championship are about 10 times higher than in the Austrian league ....

I know it's only the Daily Mail, but this article suggests 3 times

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2833020/Premier-League-wages-dwarf-Europe-flight-players-England-earning-average-2-3million-year.html

<EDIT> I think that's the article you're referring to Ian.

Still, for me the wages have never been the issue and I think the Central and Eastern European leagues are a good place to scout because of the wage discrepancies. it's been the prospective transfer fee of £3.5m that raises eyebrows for me.

Totally agree that the fee is far outside of the financial spectrum we've been told we are working within. However, think back to summer 2005 when we signed Lita for £1m and there was a mixture of excitement and questions over whether he could cut it in a higher division. Now it's not an exact comparison and the club is not the same as it was, but consider the jump from our previous record signing of £850k for Asaba to £1m for Lita; then extrapolate that from £2.5m, our current record fee, to the £3.8m being touted for Beric and factor in more wealthy owners, better sponsorship deals and a huge increase in TV revenue. As improbable as it may seem, paying £3.8m for a player is not necessarily impossible, even for little old Reading.

Whether that investment works out is another matter.

[RoyallyFcuked]

The average wage for a League One player is about £2k per week, so dont be surprised if we more than doubled the wages of Akpan and Blackman.

I dont reckon their on average Championship wage (about 10k) but if they are then more fool us. They were strange signings even at the time and I'd like to blame AZ for them but I'm not sure they were his choices.

While other PL clubs were strengthing we decided to sign what we thought was League One sides Sheffield United and Crawley Town's best players off the back FA Cup wins against those two sides. We are a funny little club but I'm glad if that was the case because if AZ had been allowed to throw more money at it like he did with Pogrebnyak then we could have been a lot worse off.

[3points]

The fee won't actaully be £3.8m in reality. Transfer fees rarely are anything like the quoted price as they usually have trigger points and milestones included and many are paid out in instalments. So we may only need to find less than £1m now and his wages are likely to be quite low right now.

I would also expect both McCleary and Gunter to have had relegation clauses in their contracts. They weren't Anton's trophy signings so probably got the regular Nicky Hammond treatment in their negotiations. I was told By someone ITK that HRK re-signed on £16k a week, the same as Pearce two summers ago.

[Ian Royal]

I'm sure someone with a better mathematical brain than mine can work it out, but surely having possibly 5 players in a squad of 25+ on wages above the divisional average is about what you would expect ?
And it assumes that because we signed players in the Prem they are still on higher than average wages.

The issue isn't how many are above the average, it's by how much they are above it.

I don't know what the standard deviation is for top paid players at non relegated clubs is, but I'm guessing it won't be in the region of 100%.

Surely the real issue is your bit about guessing !

And the fact that there are lots of relevant factors.

Crucially we don't actually know what any of the players are paid, or how their contracts are actually structured. A guess at 20k a week might represent a 5k base wage, then loads of bonuses which may or may not kick in. So if Karajan was on 5k basic plus 10k appearance money his actual take home has been much reduced of late. If Pog is on 20k basic and 10k per goal he's not been collected top whack. If all the players are on win bonuses and league position bonuses they've missed out on a lot of payments.
We're guessing, and drawing conclusions based on our very limited knowledge. Not much else we can do, but you need to be very cautious in assuming we know whether we can afford players given we're not really sure what we are using to judge that, possibly until annual accounts are published and we can take the total wage bill and divvy it up somehow.

But we've got a rough idea of who the top earners are and what our wage bill was like not that long ago compared to the rest of the division. And when know when and under what conditions players signed contracts.

Can't remember where but there was an interview where an agent or a DoF was talking about at leats 2/3rds being basic rate and then some based n performance. Although goal and assist bonuses are dying as they don't encourage a team ethic.