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Newcastle United wage bill is lower than 16 Premier League clubs…and Barcelona – New Report

5 years ago
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The Newcastle United wage bill is under scrutiny on Monday.

A new report has revealed the top paid sporting squads in the World and NUFC come in at number 166 in the list.

Barcelona are at the very top with their squad paid an average of £10,454,259 each per year.

American sports dominate towards the top end generally though and the Premier League only has one in the top ten.

Manchester United sneaking in at tenth spot with average pay of £6,534,654, less than two thirds of the Barcelona average.

In terms of pay per week, Barcelona’s players pick up over £200,000, whilst Man Utd’s have to make do with an average of £125,000 per week.

The Global Sports Salaries Survey is published by Sporting Intelligence who specialise in sport’s relationship with money.

They have a very good reputation when reporting on the Premier League especially, and when it comes to collating the figures for this survey of sporting salaries, they have relied on a network of ‘trusted sources’ to deliver the data.

As for Newcastle United, the average squad pay to get them the position of 166th best paid sporting squad in the world is £1,650,133 which comes out at a figure of £31,733 per week.

For most Newcastle fans, the big interest will be in comparing the average Newcastle United wage bill with those of the other 19 Premier League clubs, rather than US baseball and basketball teams.

The data shows that only three clubs pay their players less than Newcastle United, promoted Cardiff at the very bottom, then Huddersfield and Burnley.

The last official Newcastle United accounts to be published were for the promotion season and the message the club were trying to push out was how astonishingly high the Newcastle United wage bill had been.

However, whilst most of the media blindly repeated the line the club wanted them to, you didn’t have to look very far to see that the total ‘wage bill’ was grossly distorted due to an accountancy decision to include future wages for players who weren’t expected to play for the club again, as well as high bonuses triggered by the promotion, rather than being normal wages.

No matter what you think of those last available club accounts and how they tried to present things, or indeed this report from Sporting Intelligence, you surely only need to use common sense when having a good guess that Newcastle’s players would be low down when it comes to pay in the Premier League.

Rafa Benitez said last season that he couldn’t even compete with Brighton and Huddersfield when it came to transfer fees and wages.

Whilst it shouldn’t take a genius to work out that when Newcastle haven’t paid more than £10m for a player since promotion, and indeed £5m or £6m is more like the average per signing, the wage aren’t going to be massive either.

Clubs such as Bournemouth have spent £20m and £25m on players in the last 18 months, Fulham £22m and £27m this summer, Southampton buying any number of players for around the £15m mark….the wages are going to tally closely with transfer fees, except in certain situations such as if you sign an Ibrahimovic or similar on a free, which isn’t going to happen under Mike Ashley.

When Newcastle were relegated back in 2015/16, the NUFC squad was shown by the respected Swiss Ramble blog to be one of the lowest paid in the Premier League, a very similar position to what we see now.

As always at Newcastle United under Mike Ashley, the numbers don’t really add up…

Premier League first team wages according to Sporting Intelligence:

  1. Man Utd £6,534,654
  2. Man City £5,993,000
  3. Chelsea £5,020,004
  4. Liverpool £4,862,963
  5. Arsenal £4,853,130
  6. Tottenham £3,515,778
  7. Everton £3,252,690
  8. West Ham £3,189,333
  9. Crystal Palace £2,757,000
  10. Leicester £2,710,710
  11. Southampton £2,669,333
  12. Bournemouth £1,989,520
  13. Watford £1,775,172
  14. Wolves £1,757,600
  15. Fulham £1,727,440
  16. Brighton £1,695,040
  17. Newcastle £1,650,133
  18. Burnley £1,603,197
  19. Huddersfield £1,238,000
  20. Cardiff £957,471
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