United Wage Structure - the actual cultural reset

[Rojofiam]

Errr look at our latest financial results….the wages are still a huge problem.

Do you realize it's not really feasible for United to have a much smaller wage bill than currently? A top 3 biggest club in the world isn't going to have just one or two players above 200k per week and have the players on 120k and 150k as their top earners.

When we had Ronaldo at 515k, De Gea at 375k, Varane at 340k, Pogba at 290k, Cavani at 250k, Martial at 250k, and Sancho at 250k, then yes, it was years of mismanagement that led to that situation and it was bad.

But now?

Casemiro will be gone soon.

Bruno's wages are realistic. He's still one of the best players in the league and plays for the league's biggest club as its captain and best player.

Rashford might be gone soon.

Mount obviously isn't doing enough currently to justify his wages but his injuries are a totally different subject.

Antony will be gone soon.

De Ligt earns less than he did at Bayern, and if you check the top earning defenders across the Premier League, he's right around where he should be, considering everything.

I'd say the same about Maguire as I did about de Ligt, but there's a chance he's leaving at the end of the season. So, he either stays on the same or reduced wages, which are reasonable for a player of his quality, or leaves, freeing up even more space.

Sancho is gone soon.

Eriksen is gone soon.

The next highest earners after the players mentioned are Shaw at 150k/week, Mazraoui at 135k/week, and then the quartet of Onana, Martínez, Ugarte, and Lindelöf at 120k/week each. Lindelöf is gone too at the end of the season, as we know.

Wages aren't a huge problem unless you expect United to pay mid-table wages instead of top 6 wages. (But we are 14th is not a good counter-argument)

United have actually set their wage bill up nicely in the last 24 months for the next few years. Most of the work is done and there's a lot of space for the upcoming rebuild and a lot of new players.

 

[TheReligion]

Not remotely surprised by De Ligt's wage. Fully expected it and was part of the reason I was so against the move when everyone else wanted it to happen. Besides generally thinking he's very overrated, if he doesn't perform well, we're stuck with him long-term. Multiplying Antony's Ajax wage by 10X is without doubt the worst piece of business in football history. On top of that, we spent over £80m on him.

INEOS have changed nothing in a positive way. New players continue to get ridiculously inflated contracts. On top of that, INEOS are even worse than the inept Glazers, fecking over the women's team, fecking over the normal working class employees who did nothing wrong, raising ticket prices to screw the most devoted fans over, removing our legends' charities. All spearheaded by a tax dodging cnut. Genuinely disgusted to have these pathetic excuses for human beings associated with the club.

I mean if you go off these figures it’s quite clear that the signings under INEOS are on far less..

Yoro
Zirkzee
Mazraoui
Ugarte

De Ligt is an outlier at 10m

 

[TheReligion]

Do you realize it's not really feasible for United to have a much smaller wage bill than currently? A top 3 biggest club in the world isn't going to have just one or two players above 200k per week and have the players on 120k and 150k as their top earners.

When we had Ronaldo at 515k, De Gea at 375k, Varane at 340k, Pogba at 290k, Cavani at 250k, Martial at 250k, and Sancho at 250k, then yes, it was years of mismanagement that led to that situation and it was bad.

But now?

Casemiro will be gone soon.

Bruno's wages are realistic. He's still one of the best players in the league and plays for the league's biggest club as its captain and best player.

Rashford might be gone soon.

Mount obviously isn't doing enough currently to justify his wages but his injuries are a totally different subject.

Antony will be gone soon.

De Ligt earns less than he did at Bayern, and if you check the top earning defenders across the Premier League, he's right around where he should be, considering everything.

I'd say the same about Maguire as I did about de Ligt, but there's a chance he's leaving at the end of the season. So, he either stays on the same or reduced wages, which are reasonable for a player of his quality, or leaves, freeing up even more space.

Sancho is gone soon.

Eriksen is gone soon.

The next highest earners after the players mentioned are Shaw at 150k/week, Mazraoui at 135k/week, and then the quartet of Onana, Martínez, Ugarte, and Lindelöf at 120k/week each. Lindelöf is gone too at the end of the season, as we know.

Wages aren't a huge problem unless you expect United to pay mid-table wages instead of top 6 wages. (But we are 14th is not a good counter-argument)

United have actually set their wage bill up nicely in the last 24 months for the next few years. Most of the work is done and there's a lot of space for the upcoming rebuild and a lot of new players.

Yep good post.

There’s actually been some good work done to reduce this. Just look at our more recent signings wage.

 

[iKnowNothing]

.

Antony will be gone soon.

What’s happening with Antony?

 

[OmarUnited4ever]

I mean if you go off these figures it’s quite clear that the signings under INEOS are on far less..

Yoro
Zirkzee
Mazraoui
Ugarte

De Ligt is an outlier at 10m

They say De Ligt earns less at United than what he earned at Bayern.

Do you realize it's not really feasible for United to have a much smaller wage bill than currently? A top 3 biggest club in the world isn't going to have just one or two players above 200k per week and have the players on 120k and 150k as their top earners.

When we had Ronaldo at 515k, De Gea at 375k, Varane at 340k, Pogba at 290k, Cavani at 250k, Martial at 250k, and Sancho at 250k, then yes, it was years of mismanagement that led to that situation and it was bad.

But now?

Casemiro will be gone soon.

Bruno's wages are realistic. He's still one of the best players in the league and plays for the league's biggest club as its captain and best player.

Rashford might be gone soon.

Mount obviously isn't doing enough currently to justify his wages but his injuries are a totally different subject.

Antony will be gone soon.

De Ligt earns less than he did at Bayern, and if you check the top earning defenders across the Premier League, he's right around where he should be, considering everything.

I'd say the same about Maguire as I did about de Ligt, but there's a chance he's leaving at the end of the season. So, he either stays on the same or reduced wages, which are reasonable for a player of his quality, or leaves, freeing up even more space.

Sancho is gone soon.

Eriksen is gone soon.

The next highest earners after the players mentioned are Shaw at 150k/week, Mazraoui at 135k/week, and then the quartet of Onana, Martínez, Ugarte, and Lindelöf at 120k/week each. Lindelöf is gone too at the end of the season, as we know.

Wages aren't a huge problem unless you expect United to pay mid-table wages instead of top 6 wages. (But we are 14th is not a good counter-argument)

United have actually set their wage bill up nicely in the last 24 months for the next few years. Most of the work is done and there's a lot of space for the upcoming rebuild and a lot of new players.

Very good post, the departure of high earners like CR7, DDG, Sancho, Varane and Martial this season and last season freed up significant monies.

As of now, Cas and Rashford and Bruno are the top 3 earners at 300k and Mount is very close, the rest are on reasonable wages, some are leaving this summer, Maguire, Lindelof, Eriksen and Evans, which would free some money, the wage bill is healthy, in terms of ratio between wage bill and revenues is definitely lower than it was years ago (it was 56% during the time CR7 and DDG).

 

[Rojofiam]

Yep good post.

There’s actually been some good work done to reduce this. Just look at our more recent signings wage.

I'm certain that Ineos viewed that as a very important part of our transfer dealings last summer, because I think de Ligt, Ugarte and Mazraoui were given reasonable wages. Zirkzee and Yoro too IMO, but obviously they got huge increases on their Bologna and Lille wages.

What’s happening with Antony?

He clearly doesn't have a future at the club, so I presume he will be leaving in one of the next 2 transfer windows.

 

[Rojofiam]

They say De Ligt earns less at United than what he earned at Bayern.



Very good post, the departure of high earners like CR7, DDG, Sancho, Varane and Martial this season and last season freed up significant monies.

As of now, Cas and Rashford and Bruno are the top 3 earners at 300k and Mount is very close, the rest are on reasonable wages, some are leaving this summer, Maguire, Lindelof, Eriksen and Evans, which would free some money, the wage bill is healthy, in terms of ratio between wage bill and revenues is definitely lower than it was years ago (it was 56% during the time CR7 and DDG).

Thanks. I agree with what you're saying too. The rest of the work is just a question of letting a few contracts expire and finding a buyer for reasonable fees if the club intend to sell the likes of Casemiro, Antony, and Rashford.

 

[bb8]

Do you realize it's not really feasible for United to have a much smaller wage bill than currently? A top 3 biggest club in the world isn't going to have just one or two players above 200k per week and have the players on 120k and 150k as their top earners.

When we had Ronaldo at 515k, De Gea at 375k, Varane at 340k, Pogba at 290k, Cavani at 250k, Martial at 250k, and Sancho at 250k, then yes, it was years of mismanagement that led to that situation and it was bad.

But now?

Casemiro will be gone soon.

Bruno's wages are realistic. He's still one of the best players in the league and plays for the league's biggest club as its captain and best player.

Rashford might be gone soon.

Mount obviously isn't doing enough currently to justify his wages but his injuries are a totally different subject.

Antony will be gone soon.

De Ligt earns less than he did at Bayern, and if you check the top earning defenders across the Premier League, he's right around where he should be, considering everything.

I'd say the same about Maguire as I did about de Ligt, but there's a chance he's leaving at the end of the season. So, he either stays on the same or reduced wages, which are reasonable for a player of his quality, or leaves, freeing up even more space.

Sancho is gone soon.

Eriksen is gone soon.

The next highest earners after the players mentioned are Shaw at 150k/week, Mazraoui at 135k/week, and then the quartet of Onana, Martínez, Ugarte, and Lindelöf at 120k/week each. Lindelöf is gone too at the end of the season, as we know.

Wages aren't a huge problem unless you expect United to pay mid-table wages instead of top 6 wages. (But we are 14th is not a good counter-argument)

United have actually set their wage bill up nicely in the last 24 months for the next few years. Most of the work is done and there's a lot of space for the upcoming rebuild and a lot of new players.

Of course wages are a huge problem. It's not that we need to shrink the total wages, but rather that the wages are grossly misallocated to underperforming players.

According to these numbers Casemiro is the 4th highest paid player in the Premier League. On top of that we're still amortizing the £65M transfer fee we paid for him for PSR every year. He's making almost half of Brentford's entire payroll, and he doesn't even start for us. It's a massive waste of resources. You say he's "gone soon". Where? From where I'm sitting he's probably going to be with us til he leaves on a free 18 months from now. It'll be a problem until summer 2026, when it'll finally free up a ton of cash that can (hopefully) be used on a star player. You could afford almost any player in the world for just Casemiro's transfer fee + wages.

If you look at our top 10 players by wages (Casemiro, Bruno, Rashford, Mount, Antony, De Ligt, Maguire, Sancho, Erikson, and Shaw) only 2 of them start regularly (Bruno and De Ligt), and Maguire is the only other one that really meaningfully contributes to the team. That's preposterously bad. We're' spending enough money that we should be top 4 at an absolute minimum, but most of our resources go to players who do not contribute to the team.

The wages are THE problem. And Sancho, Maguire, and Erikson are the only ones of those slated to be gone soon. United still have 5 large, long-term bad contracts in Casemiro (2026 expiring), Antony (2027), Shaw (2027), Rashford (2028), Mount (2028). Hopefully we can ship a couple off in the next 6 months so we can free up money to re-invest.

 

[Rojofiam]

Of course wages are a huge problem. It's not that we need to shrink the total wages, but rather that the wages are grossly misallocated to underperforming players.

According to these numbers Casemiro is the 4th highest paid player in the Premier League. On top of that we're still amortizing the £65M transfer fee we paid for him for PSR every year. He's making almost half of Brentford's entire payroll, and he doesn't even start for us. It's a massive waste of resources. You say he's "gone soon". Where? From where I'm sitting he's probably going to be with us til he leaves on a free 18 months from now. It'll be a problem until summer 2026, when it'll finally free up a ton of cash that can (hopefully) be used on a star player. You could afford almost any player in the world for just Casemiro's transfer fee + wages.

If you look at our top 10 players by wages (Casemiro, Bruno, Rashford, Mount, Antony, De Ligt, Maguire, Sancho, Erikson, and Shaw) only 2 of them start regularly (Bruno and De Ligt), and Maguire is the only other one that really meaningfully contributes to the team. That's preposterously bad. We're' spending enough money that we should be top 4 at an absolute minimum, but most of our resources go to players who do not contribute to the team.

The wages are THE problem. And Sancho, Maguire, and Erikson are the only ones of those slated to be gone soon. United still have 5 large, long-term bad contracts in Casemiro (2026 expiring), Antony (2027), Shaw (2027), Rashford (2028), Mount (2028). Hopefully we can ship a couple off in the next 6 months so we can free up money to re-invest.

These problems will solve themselves, eventually. You can probably find at least 1 or 2 players at any club that's underperforming relative to their wages or barely playing but earning a lot. A perfect wage bill is almost impossible to achieve IMO.

Even just letting Eriksen and Lindelöf go at the end of the season will free up £270k/week which is £14m annually. Slowly, but surely the wage bill will get even healthier.

 

[Big Ben Foster]

Do you realize it's not really feasible for United to have a much smaller wage bill than currently? A top 3 biggest club in the world isn't going to have just one or two players above 200k per week and have the players on 120k and 150k as their top earners.

When we had Ronaldo at 515k, De Gea at 375k, Varane at 340k, Pogba at 290k, Cavani at 250k, Martial at 250k, and Sancho at 250k, then yes, it was years of mismanagement that led to that situation and it was bad.

But now?

Casemiro will be gone soon.

Bruno's wages are realistic. He's still one of the best players in the league and plays for the league's biggest club as its captain and best player.

Rashford might be gone soon.

Mount obviously isn't doing enough currently to justify his wages but his injuries are a totally different subject.

Antony will be gone soon.

De Ligt earns less than he did at Bayern, and if you check the top earning defenders across the Premier League, he's right around where he should be, considering everything.

I'd say the same about Maguire as I did about de Ligt, but there's a chance he's leaving at the end of the season. So, he either stays on the same or reduced wages, which are reasonable for a player of his quality, or leaves, freeing up even more space.

Sancho is gone soon.

Eriksen is gone soon.

The next highest earners after the players mentioned are Shaw at 150k/week, Mazraoui at 135k/week, and then the quartet of Onana, Martínez, Ugarte, and Lindelöf at 120k/week each. Lindelöf is gone too at the end of the season, as we know.

Wages aren't a huge problem unless you expect United to pay mid-table wages instead of top 6 wages. (But we are 14th is not a good counter-argument)

United have actually set their wage bill up nicely in the last 24 months for the next few years. Most of the work is done and there's a lot of space for the upcoming rebuild and a lot of new players.

But it is a valid counterargument. The whole point is that we're paying top 3 wages to a rank average squad and getting a very poor return on our investment.

 

[Rojofiam]

But it is a valid counterargument. The whole point is that we're paying top 3 wages to a rank average squad and getting a very poor return on our investment.

Our squad is still somewhere between the 4th and 6th best in the league. Probably 5th or 6th currently.

So if we are paying top 3 wages (I don't think we are, anymore) with around 3-5 players on relatively high wages probably leaving soon, after having cleared millions from the weekly payroll by the dozens of departures in the last 24 months, the situation isn't bad IMO.

Also, I've forgot to post this earlier in this thread, but according to this tweet and the thread following it, our wage bill is even lower than what the information available on sites like Capology, etc. suggests:



@Big Ben Foster @bb8 @OmarUnited4ever @iKnowNothing @TheReligion @Devil_forever

Further info that reinforces the notion that we are in a healthy situation regarding the wage bill

 

[sugar_kane]

There's a semi-interesting piece in the Torygraph today about the impact signing Sanchez had on our wage structure

It notes that within 18 months of the signing we'd put 21 year old Rashford on a £250k a week deal and De Gea ended up renewing for £375k per week. It also meant the likes of Herrera were demanding over £300k to sign.

Despite all the questionable decisions made since then, we're definitely making some progress towards undoing this. I just thought it was interesting considering the domino-effect one player could have on the whole structure. It also notes the impact on the dressing room, that's before you get into an in-form Martial getting dropped to accommodate Sanchez in the starting eleven.

After his signing we also brought into Ronny, Casemiro, Varane and Cavani - all aging stars on massive wages.

What they fail to note is that Zlatan was on about £350k a week 2 years before, but I think that's because it's mainly a puff piece on how amazing Arsenal are.

 

[Devil_forever]

Our squad is still somewhere between the 4th and 6th best in the league. Probably 5th or 6th currently.

So if we are paying top 3 wages (I don't think we are, anymore) with around 3-5 players on relatively high wages probably leaving soon, after having cleared millions from the weekly payroll by the dozens of departures in the last 24 months, the situation isn't bad IMO.

Also, I've forgot to post this earlier in this thread, but according to this tweet and the thread following it, our wage bill is even lower than what the information available on sites like Capology, etc. suggests:



@Big Ben Foster @bb8 @OmarUnited4ever @iKnowNothing @TheReligion @Devil_forever

Further info that reinforces the notion that we are in a healthy situation regarding the wage bill

Stop posting this fraud, his wage predictions and ebitda predictions for this year were way way off and he posts that our wages to revenue ratio is 27%, it's not, its circa 55% according to our latest set of accounts.