Thursday, September 4, 2008

Silly money in the Unibond League

While I am convinced top-flight football is terminally ill and its death is inevitable, I would have to be a fool to deny the amount of spending in lower divisions is anything other than outrageous at times.

However, I was stunned to discover Eastwood Town, of the Unibond Premier League, have a wage budget of £9,000-a-week. Just to clarify, the league is one rung of the ladder below the Conference North and, therefore, three rungs below League Two and six rungs below the Premier League.

Assuming - and I honestly know little about the club or the league they are in - Eastwood Town have 20 players on their books. That would mean, on average, they earn £450-a-week each. Obviously some will earn quite a bit less and some quite a bit more. But, in any case, that does seem a lot of money for someone plying their trade in the seventh-tier of English football.

Interestingly, I only discovered this while browsing through the Manchester Evening News and found an article about a game between FC United and Eastwood Town. It transpires FC United, who were created when the Glazers took over Manchester United, have a wage-budget of just one-sixth the size of their opponents!

Is there anywhere a real, traditional fan can go to watch a football where money isn't the main influence on the game? Heck, even though it's unlikely the European Union would never allow it, perhaps it's about to to introduce a stringent, Europe-wide wage-cap with the maximum set differently for the different tiers.

Seventh-tier and averaging £450-a-week per player. Where did it all go wrong?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the money is there then the players should get it. They are the ones the fans are paying to see.

Will be interesting to see how much it affects the lower leagues though, with advertising spends dipping significantly.