My understanding is that the vast majority of both Premier League and Championship clubs will have posted losses for 2024/25 with those of the Greed League being substantially higher than those in the Championship.

Moreover, wage costs in the Premier League take up an average of around 75% of any income. In 2022/2023 (a season that saw total Premiership club losses of over ?1billion) Leicester's wage bill even exceeded their total income.

As for the wage costs themselves, for the 2022/23 season, according to a BBC report, the average weekly wage cost for the playing squad for most Premier League clubs was around ?70k, with Arsenal being ?109k, Spurs ?116k, Manure ?154k, Liverpool ?173k, Chelsea ?187k and Man City ?196k. These are weekly wage figures for the first team squad and whilst they are for 3 years ago, the figures do seem much smaller than expected. Even so, I doubt that any of our own individual players are therefore on ?25k a week let alone ?40k.

It's very difficult to find an accurate report of our player's salaries. The FanCast website, for example, had Albion down as the Championship club with the fifth highest wage bill for 2023/24 at an average weekly wage of ?16,866 for first team players. The Salary Sport website For 2025, on the other hand, has the (thankfully!) departed Illing Junior on a whopping ?53k a week, Mepham on ?37k, Phillips on ?24k, Taylor, Gilchrist and Wallace on ?23k, Dike and Grant on ?22k, Mowatt and Heggebo on ?18k, Maja on ?17k, Bielik on ?15k, Price on ?13k, Molumby, Campbell and Mikey on ?11k, Styles on ?7.4k, Diakite on ?6.8k and Griffiths on ?4.1k. Even if the figures are not accurate, it seems pretty obvious that the likes of Campbell, Mikey, Molumby, Styles and Diakite should be earning more and the likes of Wallace, Dike, Mepham, Taylor, Gilchrist, Grant and Heggabo less.



For 2022/2023 in the Premiership, only Fulham and Man City avoided having a net debt and whilst the former probably managed their finances well, the latter only just scraped into net profit due to their far greater income from broadcasting and commercial revenue. In that year Spurs recorded a net debt of ?670 million, Manure ?663 million and Everton ?331 million. Chelsea's ?109 million net debt was only prevented from being far more by Abramovich spending some ?900,00 a week on interest free loans.

As a business model, surely the higher echelons of football are not sustainable long term but in the meantime, with all that money swilling about, there are plenty getting rich on the back of the present set up so can't see it changing anytime soon.

As for ourselves, the club needs to be much smarter in its recruitment and avoid paying higher salaries to those whose performances do not warrant it whilst still ensuring that our better players are rewarded with an appropriate salary that reflects their worth.