The blunt truth is the wage bill has been a real anchor on this club. For three seasons running our pay spend has been worryingly high — peaking at 76% of turnover and last season still at 61% with first-team wages making up a huge chunk. Cut the noise: those numbers matter when you’re operating under a 70% FFP-style constraint.

Why the percentages actually matter

To be fair, it isn’t just wages. Turnover has gone up by over £11m in the same period, which helps. But when squad costs, transfers and agent fees are judged against turnover, a bloated wage bill eats your buying power before you even start looking at the market. The club’s reductions in pay and the rise in income have bought roughly £14m of regulatory headroom from 22/23 to 24/25 — that’s welcome. Still, headroom doesn’t mean much if it’s swallowed by one or two big contracts.

Sell to buy: the arithmetic nobody likes

Here’s a simple way to look at it. A player on £20k a week costs about £1m a year. That’s over 1% of our turnover. If you sign someone before you clear the old wage, you’re carrying that extra cost on top of what you already have. Fail to shift the outgoing player and you’ve doubled an already significant charge. It’s not glamorous, but moving players off the books first is the most obvious route to sensible financial prudence.

Where that leaves us

There are lots of moving parts — scouting, recruitment, agent fees, timing, the market. But you can see why the wage story comes first. High salaries have been dragging the club for years and, to my mind, the recent push to reduce that burden is the right call. We can’t expect to be buying at the top end of the market while carrying outsized wage commitments. Cleaning the wage sheet gives Danny and the recruitment team a fighting chance to spend smartly and sustainably.

Written by Angus1812: 6 August 2026

Tags: transfers