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Pardew: We can’t match big clubs on wages.

Posted on June 12th, 2011 | 11 Comments |

Alan Pardew.
Pardew: Can't compete with the big boys on wages.
Speaking to North East weekly, the Sunday Stun, Newcastle United manager, Alan Pardew has claimed that the club cannot compete with big clubs such as Tottenham or Liverpool on in terms of transfers or wages.

This is something which seemed obvious to many fans when promising stroker, Andy Carroll, was spirited away to the latter club for a transfer fee of up to £35 million, and a contract which dwarfed anything which Newcastle were willing to offer him. However, the Magpies’ supremo has assured us that despite the imbalance in finances, we can compete with the likes of Tottenham and Liverpool on the pitch.

Pardew said of the imbalance:

“I don’t think we’re anywhere near Spurs in terms of the wage bill. Theirs is double ours, so you can forget about Spurs.

“That doesn’t mean to say we can’t compete with them on the playing pitch. On transfers, we can’t compete with their wages. We can’t compete with Liverpool’s wages.

“We’ve got to face that reality. We can’t.”

Sports economist, Stefan Szymanski, may beg to differ with Pardew about competing on the pitch with clubs who spend far more on player’s salaries, as he estimated that a Premier League club’s spending on wages explains around 90% of a clubs league position at the end of a seaason (Szymanski and Tim Kuypers, Winners and Losers, 1999; Szymanski and Simon Kuper, Soccernomics, 2009), though perhaps not in Newcastle’s case as the club was relegated despite having a wage bill of over £70 million, which was higher than Tottenham’s £67 million for a squad which came fourth and qualified for the Champion’s League the season after.

I did a little checking with Deloitte’s ‘Annual Review of Football Finances’ for the 2009/10 season, which reported that Tottenham’s wages were the seventh highest in the Premiership, with (as mentioned above) the North London club having a wage bill of £67 million. Of the other team mentioned by Pardew, Liverpool, their wage bill for the 2009/10 season was almost double that of Tottenham’s, with a fourth highest total wage bill of £121 million in the 2009/10 season.

NUFCBlog Author: workyticket workyticket has written 1078 articles on this blog.

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Comment on this post

11 Responses

  1. He’s right on this, we can’t afford to double our wage bill at this point in time with no regular euro football.
    spuds will be hating not getting champs league again like, ouch!

  2. On this score I believe the policy is correct why should players who have taken Newcastle to relegation, promotion from a crap league and then 12th be paid £60k plus a week? Teams like Bolton, Fulham, Everton and even the unwashed tend not to hand out those wages and regularly finish higher than us in recent years. The wage bill is in the £10-40k range with a few special cases in the £50k range a week (Enrique, Tiote, Barton, Nolan, colo).

  3. Bleemo says:
    June 12, 2011 at 9:37 pm

    “On this score I believe the policy is correct why should players who have taken Newcastle to relegation, promotion from a crap league and then 12th be paid £60k plus a week?”

    Aye Bleemo, but we weren’t relegated because we paid high wages, we were relegated because we bought poorly, made some poor management decisions and were perennially unstable.

  7. Newcastle’s wage bill last season was 60 million compared to Spurs 62 million. Tottenham manage the club better that’s all. Pardew should learn the facts before making b/S excuses.

  9. What hasn’t already been said about poor mr pardew eh? I standby the reasoning that he was brought in to ease the managerial pain behind the andy carroll transfer CH did not want him to go , but pardew would have been briefed to get in line and face it cashley is in charge. with that in mind we are always going to be poorly managed/ coached until the directors keep their head out of the everyday running of the club .
    In which case Pardew’s statement is borderline mutiny on the bounty against cashleys steady ship , interesting to see how long he lasts next season when MA sells some more to furnish his pockets !

    We need a coach and some finance that work in parallel together , that is decades away , I’m afraid !

    Oh and I’m in NZ , another earthquake in Christchurch ..ugh….

  10. Ha, doomed indeed. As was said, comparisons between us and Spurs 2-3 seasons ago wouldn’t have been ludicrous. Relegation put a big dent in our pocket and it will take some time to bounce back.

    I’m optimistic about our chances of growing as a club and regaining our former status in coming years. We have a solid fan base, a great stadium and name recognition in the league. The austerity measures currently in place will hopefully allow us to rebuild the clubs culture in a more sustainable manner.

    As fans we need to keep expectations in check and continue to support the team the best we can. It may be harder for some without the superstar names but its best to keep the big picture in mind.

    Newcastle fans are seen in 2 ways: infectiously passionate and delusional, we need to do our best to live up to the former without devolving into the latter.

  11. ‘…club’s spending on wages explains around 90% of a clubs league position at the end of a seaason….’

    Clearly Newcastle are the exception to this rule with our relegation.

    More of interest and missing from this analysis is winning tophies. The objective of a club is to win trophies be that league or cup.

    In our case under previous chairmen we spend lavishly (and foolishly in many instances) and won absolutley nothing.