Gidney blames unrealistic players wages (1 Viewer)

intercity said:

EX ricoh CEO Gidney blames high players wages for our predicament and not the rent that amounted to 12% of revenue

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Makes sense. But what about piss poor boardrooms. Plus poor performances on pitch :/

Bill Glazier said:

Sisu could have negotiated a lower rent years ago. They're stupid as well as despicable.

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If SISU had any business nous about them, the rent issue would have been their number one priority before agreeing to take over the club.

OK, they knew (and still know) nothing about the football industry, but surely even they realised it was too high when they first took over (and I presume it would have been listed quite clearly when they were looking at expense sheets for the previous years....)

The number 1 and 2 priorities should have been:

1) renegotiating the rent or buying a stake in the Ricoh

2) cutting and restructuring the wage bill even if it meant relegation 5 years ago.

sw88 said:

If SISU had any business nous about them, the rent issue would have been their number one priority before agreeing to take over the club.

OK, they knew (and still know) nothing about the football industry, but surely even they realised it was too high when they first took over (and I presume it would have been listed quite clearly when they were looking at expense sheets for the previous years....)

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I don't think they cared about the rent while they thought they were going to get the stadium.

Bill Glazier said:

Sisu could have negotiated a lower rent years ago. They're stupid as well as despicable.

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But you're forgetting it's nothing to do with the rent. It's high wages which are to blame.

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intercity said:

EX ricoh CEO Gidney blames high players wages for our predicament and not the rent that amounted to 12% of revenue

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Of course.

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torchomatic said:

But you're forgetting it's nothing to do with the rent. It's high wages which are to blame.

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He has a point. Even if we'd played at the Ricoh and had full F&B we'd still have lost about £3.5m a year under Sisu.

What bothers me was the stories of third lowest wages in the Chanpionship, then a few years of fairly savage cuts during which all non-Sisu contracted players left or agreed new terms, yet here we are.

Suggests either:

A) we are not viable as a club with our fanbase and should be wound up/reduce size to L2/non-league standard.

B) something is up with our accounting and were not making the losses we claim

C) wages aren't the problem, some other massively costly item is dragging us down. Any ideas?

Weird. Never seen high wages blamed by anyone on here before.

In all honesty I would think it was a combination of many things; not just rent, not judt wages, but apparently not.

Unsurprisingly, nowt to do with acl.

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torchomatic said:

Weird. Never seen high wages blamed by anyone on here before.

In all honesty I would think it was a combination of many things; not just rent, not judt wages, but apparently not.

Unsurprisingly, nowt to do with acl.

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That's what Im saying. The party line has always been we pay low wages (Eastwoods £1k/week springs to mind). So why are we losing that money?

As always you put words in my mouth saying its not ACLs fault. I'm simply saying that even after a massive cost cutting campaign, even with free rent, the club still can't sustain itself. Why?

Low crowds, high rent, wage bill, no other revenue....

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shmmeee said:

He has a point. Even if we'd played at the Ricoh and had full F&B we'd still have lost about £3.5m a year under Sisu.

What bothers me was the stories of third lowest wages in the Chanpionship, then a few years of fairly savage cuts during which all non-Sisu contracted players left or agreed new terms, yet here we are.

Suggests either:

A) we are not viable as a club with our fanbase and should be wound up/reduce size to L2/non-league standard.

B) something is up with our accounting and were not making the losses we claim

C) wages aren't the problem, some other massively costly item is dragging us down. Any ideas?

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Taking aside (please God, let's take it aside!) the rent for a moment...

Were the third lowest wages under SISU, or under McGinnity (honest question - we pulled thm back under McGinnity, Robinson let them disappear under a last-gasp punt for promotion or bust - I know Ranson had a reputation as ruthless Ray but all I can say is some players... clearly met the generous side of him the day they signed their contracts!)

I can well believe, given what we paid out for some players, wages didn't help.

Sad though it is and as an indictment of English football, losing 'only' £3.5mil a year also isn't bad compared to many!

Add onto that we've kept our academy going etc. We've had delusions of being a Premiership club for a while. Doesn't mean the club has to be wound up or reduced size to that extent, but does mean we have to educate ourselves not to demand 'names', not to automatically dismiss legends such as Bas Savage just because we haven't heard of them... give them a chance.

If you think that McGinnity's initial budgets for break even on the Ricoh were 22k (and that was when slashing the wage bill) then it's not hard to see how costs at the club have been vastly excessive for years. If he was budgeting 22k for break even with the club in the state it was when we moved... just how many would we have needed to watch to pay the bills when we had Chippo, Thompson... Walsh and the like?!?

shmmeee said:

That's what Im saying. The party line has always been we pay low wages (Eastwoods £1k/week springs to mind). So why are we losing that money?

As always you put words in my mouth saying its not ACLs fault. I'm simply saying that even after a massive cost cutting campaign, even with free rent, the club still can't sustain itself. Why?

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Juke was on £7k pw, and murphy, baker and Baker are reportedly on £8k per week, we weren't paying that low wages.

shmmeee said:

That's what Im saying. The party line has always been we pay low wages (Eastwoods £1k/week springs to mind).

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£1.5k I think was the source, but I take your point

All I know is there were other players on vastly more than that, not even regular first teamers with a 'pedigree', and no excuse of being Robinson signings either, but signed by Ranson too.

So either wages paid per player were somewhat erratic, or the reputation wasn't warranted.

I don't get it. How can the ordinary "Man on the street" relate to a team where someone earns 5x as much as another team mate. They play alongside each other, they train together, and in CCFC's case, they loose together. They're just an insignificant third tier football team still sponging off the reputation of past near-glories. Instead of constantly being told about having the highest ground rent compared to other lowly clubs (the fact that it's a fantastic stadium seems to be forgotten) why doesn't someone chart a table of player wages for the team Vs points scored, and then we'll see where we're wasting money.

If you're going to point the finger at everything that has contributed to CCFC's current position, you have to include the underperforming players who couldn't quite hold it together for a full 90 minutes and saw us drop from a safe Championship team, to a first division one with serious problems. Wolves are also in the same boat having suffered sucessive relegations, but still have a loyal and strong fan base and are in a good position to be promoted this season.

I assume the Eastwood wage figure was based on the court case - of course that figure is nonsense - unless of course he took a massive wage cut to join from wolves and signed a 5 year deal to boot.

Players wages are made up in a number of ways. Ranson always claimed we were big wage payers and certainly we paid well above our means for most seasons.

torchomatic said:

Low crowds, high rent, wage bill, no other revenue....

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Last week ACL apparently offered 150k rent...rising to 400k if we were in the championship. Can someone honestly explain to me why any success (however unlikely!) should have a financial penalty to the club and a benefit to a third party company???

M&B Stand said:

Last week ACL apparently offered 150k rent...rising to 400k if we were in the championship. Can someone honestly explain to me why any success (however unlikely!) should have a financial penalty to the club and a benefit to a third party company???

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Bigger crowd, bigger TV rights bigger all round income

smouch1975 said:

Bigger crowd, bigger TV rights bigger all round income

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Let me get this right, are you saying if the club got a bigger income it should hand a percentage of it over to a third party?

M&B Stand said:

Let me get this right, are you saying if the club got a bigger income it should hand a percentage of it over to a third party?

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You sound surprised. Most people on here would like us to hand 90% of our turnover to ACL and the Council. Then all the taxpayers of Coventry can all have a reduction in Council Tax as well as go on an all expenses paid trip to Bognor Regis together. Oh but they'd still demand the club break FPP rules and sign D McGoldrick on £10,000 a week.

M&B Stand said:

Let me get this right, are you saying if the club got a bigger income it should hand a percentage of it over to a third party?

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Well, they seem to expect the rent to go down if their income reduces. So seems fair to me.

Or you could look at it that ACL are offering a massively discounted rent while the team under performs.