[Archived] Salary Cap

[Eddie]

Well I was discussing this with some American friends and I have to admit it is something that I think needs to be put in place at some point. I know it has popped up from time to time, but I was interested to see what everyone really thought (maybe a poll would be useful).

The way I see it there would be several very important benefits from a salary cap:

1. For the long-term financial viability of teams it is probably necessary, particularly for those of us that are of a similar size to us.

2. If set at a proper level it would bring current wage levels down, which would put players at more "realistic" earnings.

3. With wages being limited, bigger clubs wouldn't necessarily be able to offer better wages to players, meaning that there wouldn't necessarily be a financial reason for players to change clubs and this could help the league to be more competitive.

4. Promoted sides would find it easier to adjust to the premiership, while relegated sides wouldn't be hit quite as hard by the lost revenue.

5. It could lead to players staying at teams for longer, which would be nice for supporters (ties into point 3).

There are a few others that I haven't bothered to put in, probably quite a few that I haven't even thought of, but as you can see if it was implemented in the proper way it could really prove to be beneficial. Now I know there are several reasons why people won't like it; many will argue that if you can get that much then there is no reason why anyone else should stop it from happening, that footballers have short careers so they have to make all of their money before their mid-30's and have the constant threat of a career ending injury hanging over them and that if a similar cap wasn't introduced elsewhere then all of our players would simply go abroad.

There is some truth in all of that, but I really think that very few English players would move abroad. We'd lose a lot of foreign players in the short term probably, but you could even argue that this might benefit the England team. Anyway, just thought I'd put that out there and see what everyone thinks.

[stuwilky]

How would it be worked?

An absolute figure?

A percentage of turnover?

[philipl]

The problem is that salary caps when discussed are usually related to a per centage of turnover- Fine for Arsenal who earn in two games at the Emirates what we earn in a season at Ewood.

But it would cripple the Rovers' ability to compete.

There are also so many clever ways of paying wages that a legal team would be needed full time determining whether club-provided perms for star's pooches are included etc etc...

[Cocker]

We'd lose a lot of foreign players in the short term probably, but you could even argue that this might benefit the England team.

If you cap this league they will only go somewhere else that doesn't have a cap and the Premier league will no longer be the best league in the world.

I am all for having english players getting more of a chance however, I think that should be done by MAKING teams pick at least 3 english players in their team/sub bench

[Roaming Rover]

I'd be for it, but it would need to be a set figure and not a % of turnover as Philipl stated. It would also need to be Europe / world wide so not to penalise English clubs.

Another problem with it could be you have players like Steven Gerrard and Ronaldo being paid the same as Lee Bowyer or Reo-Coker, so wages would have to adjust accordingly.

[krislu]

It's impossible to implement, so I say no! Also, its about time people accept that there will always be teams, companies and people who have more money than others and therefore can attract the best players, most skillfull employees and the hottes women.

[stuwilky]

It's impossible to implement,

Could you tell the Rugby Football League that, they seem to have a very succesful salary capping system in operation.

[krislu]

Could you tell the Rugby Football League that, they seem to have a very succesful salary capping system in operation.

I'm not big on Rugby, but we are not talking about such a world wide sport as Football are we? Does a Rugby team in England face hard competition (in regards of getting the best players) from a Rubgy team in Spain?

[stuwilky]

I'm not big on Rugby, but we are not talking about such a world wide sport as Football are we? Does a Rugby team in England face hard competition (in regards of getting the best players) from a Rubgy team in Spain?

A salary cap is emminently possible to implement.

Whether or not the organisations who would need to be involve to implement it would do so is what I think you might be getting at.

If the will was there, it could be done.

[OscarRaven]

Successful? League standing determined by number of times a team has broken the salary cap? No Thanks.

I would suggest being a little more radical - centralise players contracts with the leagues on a standardised basis with no agents fees. Have a seeded draw (seeding determined by opta stats?) every summer, that way anyone can win the league, anyone can be relegated much more of a competition (unlike the current business and monopolies culture).

Only down side players who qualified for European competition wouldn't be the ones who got to play in it.

[Rovermatt]

It's possible in strictly regulated environments like American sports but it would be impossible to enforce as far as a global game like football is concerned.

[Ronin]

Could you tell the Rugby Football League that, they seem to have a very succesful salary capping system in operation.

For the majority but there are still wage cap breaches from the the likes of Bradford, St Helens, Wigan each year. Bradford were deducted 2 points this season for it, and I think Saints and Leeds both appealed.

I think it's working in the NHL a bit more though, as since the CBA discussions the teams are seemingly on a level footing. Would recent champions Tampa and Anaheim have won the Stanley Cup in the last two finals, and indeed would Carolina and Edmonton make the final too, they aren't exactly the big market teams, as the 'Giants' like Detroit, New York, Montreal, Toronto are. Plus it also shows that the less glamourous teams are able to acquire and keep the bigger players too (Crosby to Pittsburgh?)

I don't see it happening in the Premiership though, as I'm sure you'll get whiny Gordon Taylor come out and complain in the media like he always does

[bob fleming]

If the will was there, it could be done.

But it isn't there. No chance whatsoever of this happening. Why would the top four want to bring this in? I think you'll find they're quite happy with the way things are thank you very much. "How are the English Clubs supposed to compete in Europe with a salary cap in place?" they'd whine (despite them having hardly any English players). Similarly (different thread) I just can't see 4th place going to the winners of the FA Cup.

Why would they risk losing any power? They've got the FA, sorry not them (they don't have any say any more), The Premier League exactly where they want them.

[Hughesy]

Dont want this to happen and would be against it completely.

If the prem implemented then the best players would leave, also as others say it would make it harder for smaller clubs.

[krislu]

If the will was there, it could be done.

I see what you are saying but the will isn't there because it would be pure hell trying to implement a good working system.

One more thing I do not understand. If a salary cap was to be implemented based on turnover, what would then happen? The clubs with high turnover = high wages, low turnover = low wages. How does that differ from the current situation? Also, this could give some clubs incentives to be a bit creative in their accounting practice.

[stuwilky]

I see what you are saying but the will isn't there because it ...

...would upset G-14 and UEFA and we couldnt be having that.

NB - I agree that the will isnt there, but it is workable.

[stuwilky]

For the majority but there are still wage cap breaches from the the likes of Bradford, St Helens, Wigan each year. Bradford were deducted 2 points this season for it, and I think Saints and Leeds both appealed.

Indeed, Wigan had 4 points deducted and it appears to have scuppered their chances of being in the all important top half.

There is a salary cap, and breaches of the rules are punished properly.

[Ozz]

A vegetarian friend of mine used to have a Celery Cap, but thats another story.

[Eddie]

It's possible in strictly regulated environments like American sports but it would be impossible to enforce as far as a global game like football is concerned.

I agree that makes it easier, but I don't think it makes it impossible if it isn't.

Dont want this to happen and would be against it completely.

If the prem implemented then the best players would leave, also as others say it would make it harder for smaller clubs.

Would many English players leave? Even then the attraction of playing in England would still be there, that would be enough for some. On top of that teams could still pay some individuals huge wages. Let's say you locked it at 500k a week for the entire team, you could still pay someone 100k a week if you wanted to, just you couldn't afford to pay your entire team that.

I would probably want to see teams punished with docking points and a financial penalty (I'd rather see a financial penalty than docking points), I would do something similar to the American system there as well; let's say for every pound you go over you'd pay the league five pounds (which could then be used for various specified projects). If you wanted to pay that penalty then there is nothing stopping you.

Another way of looking at it is that it could be brought up at UEFA and could be done Europe-wide. For the majority of leagues it wouldn't even be an issue, it would really only matter in England, Germany, Spain and Italy as well as a few clubs dotted around.

It's highly unlikely that it would ever happen, but I do think it would be a good thing.

[USRoverME]

The market in the USA is too different from the market in football to do it, the biggest points being

#1 - players can get more money in another league, whereas if you want to play baseball, basketball, hockey for the top dollar, you muct be inteh states, even with the cap.

#2 - the revenue sharing deals brought up concerns that gave the larger clubs (especially in baseball) to the salary cap table, right now big clubs in england have no real reason to be upset with revenue sharing in the game, since they still see a huge shunk of the merchandise and TV money.

#3 - as was said, salary caps are broken and bent, most NFL teams have a full time staff member whose job is to figrue out how to bend the cap and not break it, but strech it when needed to allow for more spending, you then get some teams that heavily bust for a few years due to cap stretching, because like a rubber band it has to snap back. with relelgation, you'd see Leeds style collaspes every 5 years.

[Eddie]

#3 - as was said, salary caps are broken and bent, most NFL teams have a full time staff member whose job is to figrue out how to bend the cap and not break it, but strech it when needed to allow for more spending, you then get some teams that heavily bust for a few years due to cap stretching, because like a rubber band it has to snap back. with relelgation, you'd see Leeds style collaspes every 5 years.

You see I think it is quite the opposite. Right now we are on the road to the Leeds scenario repeating itself at some point, I think a cap would help to avoid that.

[yankrover]

I don't think a salary cap would work, but I'd like to see some sort of luxury tax like we have in baseball where clubs spending over a certain amount are forced to pay a tax that's distributed to the rest of the league. It would help level the playing field a bit for clubs like rovers.

[USRoverME]

Eddie, at some point in the current game, someone will do what Leeds did and mortgage the future for the present. To some extent a few clubs are doing it now. But with a cap it would be a different beast.

As has been pointed out, cap get bent broken, twisted, etc. In the NFL, (which is possibly the most effective cap in place), teams are constantly restructuring deals, deferring money in contracts, cutting players all to make the cap number work out right. The problem is that at some point, all the defferd deals "snap" and you end up having to pay a lot fo money that you cant afford under the cap, and sometimes even for players you don't even own anymore. In the NFL, you cut a bunch of players and "rebuilt" for 2-3-5-10 years. If you "rebuild" in the prem, and you get relegated, you now have to navigate the championship to recover, in addition to the fact that you had all that deffered money to pay out, but now on a Champ. budget. The even worse case scnario would be the furor created by a "rich club" havin their cap crumble, end up "rebuilding" and getting relegated, but still have loads of dosh in the kitty. Imagine the fan eraction to a cap the first time a big club with a wealthy backer gets relelgated, the backer is still rich and can still pay everything, but he wasn't allowed to pay for a better team? That'd get murderous in England. But int he states its part of "parity" where this years superbowl runner-up can go 3-13 the next season.

Now, the other model to go down is the Luxury tax model, where there's a set cap, and the higher income clubs can go over it, but they have to pay a % of that overage back to a general fund that get spread out to the non-offending clubs. That 'might' work, beacuase then at least the "buying the league" clubs end up in some way paying for the Wigans of the world to even the lower field, but this still will leave 3-5 clubs at the head, and it'll just increase the amount of clubs that could get drawn into a relegation scrap, in my view. Also this will drive away the rich backers, since the price of investing in your team gets steeper once you get over the tax, and you end up paying money to your competition, which is a big no-no generally for buisnessmen

[neekoy]

You could around it the other way my limiting the amount of non-UK/or spanish/or french or whatever players, just have six players in your squad that can be 'foreign'

Distribution of talent is how you will best combat this monopoly, suddenly the big four can't fit players in and they become available to the wider footballing community, Rovers pick up, and we become more competitive.

It would have to be driven by FIFA though then the Premiership would still get great players just not the mix of foreign crap that sometimes comes along with it.

It would strengthen all leagues and therefore make football the winner in the long run.

Arguably, when Serie A was rated the best league in the world they had foreign player restrictions in place.

Spain has restrictions in place and I think that it is the most competitive league in the world.

[awhom111]

As an American sports fan, I understand the decisions made by the leagues and why they work as well as their downsides. I also understand the development and constraints of the rules in football. I do think that there is room for all leagues to make changes, and I think football has failed to respond to the needs for change and the opportunities to improve the overall product, and we have seen some of the results.

A salary cap isn't really feasible for a multitude of reasons and isn't really a problem to me. I would like to see a few changes, the biggest being the creation of roster size restrictions like American sports, basically an extension of the registration system for European competition. The problem in my mind is not that big clubs have all the money, but that they can stockpile and not play talented players that could be stars for other clubs. The idea would be to have up to 22-25 first-team players, who can only play for the first team. Like baseball's Rule V draft, other Premier League teams would be able to draft away players (on season long loans, since the contracts don't work the same way as in American sports) if they don't make the first team squad list. If a player is starting quality in the Premier League, they should at least make the bench every game.

On the other hand, I think that the Premier League will be in position to dictate its own rules in the near future because its potential revenue is so much greater than that of other leagues. I think that the league can play by its own rules as long as it develops a plan and strategy to grow in quality. If the big clubs continue to bias everything towards themselves, it will not help the league in the long-term.