Post by jdl on Jun 30, 2015 0:14:28 GMT
Interesting article in the KM last week - they basically had Jay saying that he'd stopped looking for more senior players because they were asking for silly money, and he was going to have to use as many youngsters as he could because (I'm paraphrasing here) they were cheap. He was complaining that regular Conf South and above players' first question was always about the money, and that they wanted too much. He also remarked that many players at this level didn't have other jobs.
This got me thinking about the new world we were entering, about how much difference there was between the Isthmian and the Conference/National, and about how things have changed over the last 25 years.
When we were last in the Conference, most (all?) players were still semi-pro - they were at least nominally employed by someone else, and their football income was (nominally) secondary. Indeed there was much talk about struggling 4th Division clubs (i.e. most of them) following the business models of non-league clubs and going part-time. Move forward 25 years and almost the reverse is true, with 'Conference' clubs now running effectively as full-time - at least for their core players - and lower clubs in a hurry, like Margate, paying some of their players silly money.
And, if the step up from IPL to National South is worrying Jay, just how difficult will it be to make the transition to national football in what is now effectively the 5th Division (or League 3 in new money)? Will clubs of our size, especially those trying to run a proper business model, even be able to consider the step up?
At which point I tried to work out some figures, but rapidly realised I just didn't know enough to make any sense of the problem. I've no idea how much players are paid or what clubs earn from beer sales, sponsorship, etc, nor how much clubs' costs are (and the difference between South and National) - in other words, I've no idea how much clubs earn and how much they need to spend. But I'd be very surprised if the answers aren't "not very much" and "a hell of a lot".
But we can work out some (very) rough figures. For instance, 21 home games at 2,000 average attendance and £10 average ticket gives an annual income of £420k on ticket sales alone. For the sake of argument, let's call this £500k and assume another £500k for sponsorship, beer sales, club shop profits, cup game revenue, etc - so income (before expenses, taxes, interest charges, etc) is around £1m.
Then, let's assume the top players are on about £40k (which, if I remember was the figure being bandied about with reference to some of the Margate players). Divide one into the other and you get 25 players. So, a decent squad of decent players. But remember this doesn't take into account the true cost of employing a player (NI, pension, etc), and nor does it allow for the club to pay any other staff, or pay its electricity bills, travel costs, etc, etc. Take those considerations into account and our squad of highly paid players starts to shrink rapidly.
And that's a club that's going places, with an expanding fan base, and the realistic expectation of decent crowds - a rarity in National South, and even fairly unusual in the National National. How on earth do the smaller clubs in the South and National leagues manage?
It's impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions on what is basically guesswork, so if anyone out there has a more accurate idea of the income and expenditure of a club at our level, I'd love to know the figures.
But, even if our figures are a lot better than my guesses, the basic question remains - just how far can we afford to go?
This got me thinking about the new world we were entering, about how much difference there was between the Isthmian and the Conference/National, and about how things have changed over the last 25 years.
When we were last in the Conference, most (all?) players were still semi-pro - they were at least nominally employed by someone else, and their football income was (nominally) secondary. Indeed there was much talk about struggling 4th Division clubs (i.e. most of them) following the business models of non-league clubs and going part-time. Move forward 25 years and almost the reverse is true, with 'Conference' clubs now running effectively as full-time - at least for their core players - and lower clubs in a hurry, like Margate, paying some of their players silly money.
And, if the step up from IPL to National South is worrying Jay, just how difficult will it be to make the transition to national football in what is now effectively the 5th Division (or League 3 in new money)? Will clubs of our size, especially those trying to run a proper business model, even be able to consider the step up?
At which point I tried to work out some figures, but rapidly realised I just didn't know enough to make any sense of the problem. I've no idea how much players are paid or what clubs earn from beer sales, sponsorship, etc, nor how much clubs' costs are (and the difference between South and National) - in other words, I've no idea how much clubs earn and how much they need to spend. But I'd be very surprised if the answers aren't "not very much" and "a hell of a lot".
But we can work out some (very) rough figures. For instance, 21 home games at 2,000 average attendance and £10 average ticket gives an annual income of £420k on ticket sales alone. For the sake of argument, let's call this £500k and assume another £500k for sponsorship, beer sales, club shop profits, cup game revenue, etc - so income (before expenses, taxes, interest charges, etc) is around £1m.
Then, let's assume the top players are on about £40k (which, if I remember was the figure being bandied about with reference to some of the Margate players). Divide one into the other and you get 25 players. So, a decent squad of decent players. But remember this doesn't take into account the true cost of employing a player (NI, pension, etc), and nor does it allow for the club to pay any other staff, or pay its electricity bills, travel costs, etc, etc. Take those considerations into account and our squad of highly paid players starts to shrink rapidly.
And that's a club that's going places, with an expanding fan base, and the realistic expectation of decent crowds - a rarity in National South, and even fairly unusual in the National National. How on earth do the smaller clubs in the South and National leagues manage?
It's impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions on what is basically guesswork, so if anyone out there has a more accurate idea of the income and expenditure of a club at our level, I'd love to know the figures.
But, even if our figures are a lot better than my guesses, the basic question remains - just how far can we afford to go?
