6 Sept 2011

EXCLUSIVE: Liverpool vs. Man United - WAGE BILL comparison: 2000-2010

How much has Liverpool spent on wages over the last decade compared to other top Premier League clubs? In the first article of this new series, I compare the club with Manchester United to see if a higher wage bill really is the secret to league-winning success.

NOTES

* The wages and salary figure includes ALL staff connected with the club. This means means coaches, medical staff, and even the guys that cut the grass at Anfield. However, the bulk of the figure will obviously be player salaries.

* Below is an example of how the figures are presented in the accounts:

Wages Snippet

* Deloitte uses the same figures in its 'Annual Review of Football Finance. If the figures are valid enough for the experts in the field then they're valid enough for me to use.

* SOURCES: Official club accounts for Liverpool FC and Man United FC: 2000-2010. Liverpool FC = Liverpool Football Club and Athletics Grounds Ltd (Company No: 0003568). Man United = Manchester United Football Club Limited (Company No: 95489).

I don't have time to post 20 separate snippets from each set of accounts (!), so if someone wants verification of any given year then leave a request in the comments and I will post the relevant snippet.

LIVERPOOL vs. MAN UNITED: Wage Comparison - 2000-2010

LFC v MUFC Wage Comparison: 2000-2010

NOTES

* Is it really credible to argue that Man United outperformed Liverpool as a result of higher wage spending? As the figures here show, the difference between LFC and MU overall is comparatively minor: 3.5m extra per year over a 10 year period. Is that all it took to win 5 more titles than Liverpool? Or is it the influence of a world class manager that made the difference?

* Liverpool have higher wage spending than Man United for 3 of the last 10 years; United were higher for 7 of the last 10.

* In 2001, Liverpool had higher wage spending than United; in the same year, the club did the treble. How much did the higher wage bill that year contribute to the club's success (if at all)

* With a wage spend of £121m in 2009-10, it's just unacceptable that Liverpool did not qualify for the Champions League, especially in light of the fact Spurs spent £56m LESS on wages and managed to finish in 4th place.

* It seems to be a common belief that there is a direct correlation between wage-spend and success, but is this actually true? In its Annual Review of Football Finance 2010, pre-eminent accounting organisation Deloitte argued otherwise:

"Money spent on wages is certainly no guarantee of success for the majority of Premier League clubs, and...many clubs are getting questionable value for investment in player wages".

This has definitely proved to be the case for Liverpool FC, and if one thing is clear it's this: the value return on player salary investment (in terms of benefit to the club) has to improve exponentially under FSG and Kenny Dalglish.

NB: One of the goals of this site is to examine the club's finances in a comparative and historical context. I don't make up the figures, I just present them.

Jaimie Kanwar


50 comments:

  1. Is there any chance you could do one for the squad only? This is really interesting, but I can't help but shake the feeling that MU have a much larger staff list than we do. United are known for not being held to ransom for wages (*ahem* Rooney *cough*), whereas we seem to have been in the news in the last few years for a few really high earners (obv. this may not be true, but names mentioned such as Johnson, Cole and the other bench warmer).

    Thanks for all your hard work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Matthew - I was originally going to do the wage cost only (without social security/Pension costs), but when I did that last year for a similar analysis I just got loads of grief!  Anyway, without those costs, the figures are:

    Liverpool - £651.6m
    Man United - £689.8m

    = +38.2m / +5.5%

    ReplyDelete
  3. Liverpool did spend money on wages but they never signed big transfer fees for big players, they had to look for free transfers or bargains who command high wages, whereas Man Utd could afford to spend high transfer fees and hence they got better and better. If Liverpool had good owners at Benitez era, he would have surely won the league, Benitez never got the players he wanted cause owners won't spend and hence he had to look for bargains which can be hit or miss.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Excellent work. Thanks, Jaimie! Now we just need somebody from The Guardian to come over and write an article about it. And give you a juicy shout-out.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ronny - United may have signed more high-value players but Liverpool has a higher gross spend overall for the last 10 years.  That's a fact, and it's shown in the accounts.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ronny - United may have signed more high-value players but Liverpool has a higher gross spend overall for the last 10 years.  That's a fact, and it's shown in the accounts.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Jamie,
    Rafa reckoned that a club needs Champion's League football to attract the best players and maybe that has an added allure over money.
    The comparison vis-a-vis Arsenal will be interesting in 2 respects:
    Firstly, as they profess to be more parsimonious than us (and likely are), how they have spent over the last few years when both they and we have been less successful and,
    Secondly, how they spent over the earlier part of the decade when Wenger was, perhaps, in his heyday.
    Cheers.
    J

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Jo - Over the last 10 years, Arsenal's wage spending is a lot closer to Liverpool's than you might expect, but when it comes to transfer spend, there's no's comparison: Liverpool have spent shedloads more for minimal extra return (in terms of trophies won).  I'll post the Arsenal comparison tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
  9. why you bothering with this.  Anyone can tell you that we have not had the quality of other teams and paid over the odds, big deal.  You didn't have to provide stats for the obvious.

    "its unacceptable .....".  No team has a right to champions league.  It has to be earned and guess what? yep to obvious for me to write - even for you.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Although a good idea, it is still very vague. You did mention that the wage bill includes everyone at LFC and Man Scum so until we see that breakdown we can never know specifically. But interesting article regardless.

    It would be even more interesting to see what the wage bill at LFC is now especially when there have been rumours mentioning our wage bill has been cut by an estiomated 30million due to shipping out of all the dead wood at the club...

    In my opinion, wages dont guarantee success, the manager and the quality of the players do. Man Scum have had consistency, with the manager, infrastructure and players and thats what has given them the better success over us in the past years. I hate them, but i do envy what he has done at that club.

    Our foundations, now, at lfc, look a lot more stable and should that stay for a while, we will be climbing up that table and lifting those trophies.

    Mikey  8-)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi Colm - the figures I've used have come from the club accounts for 2009-10 (Year ending 30 June) - See the attached imaged for the page from the accounts.  I think the Swiss Ramble figure may be for the 2010 calendar year rather than the accounting year (June-June). Alternatively, it could be a figure that includes bonuses, which sometimes happens with non-account club documents outlining financial info.

    I personally feel the accounts are the most accurate source.  Bonuses etc are not really part of the standard salary, and in many cases they are dependent on performance and are thus not guaranteed.

    I agree it would be much better if there was a specific breakdown of figures relating to managers, players etc.  

    ReplyDelete
  12. Of course, gross spend is irrelevant. Net spend is what is more important, but that's an argument for another day.

    ReplyDelete
  13. "With a wage spend of £121m last season, it's just unacceptable that Liverpool did not qualify for the Champions League, especially in light of the fact Spurs spent £56m LESS on wages and managed to finish in 4th place."

    Down to one man: Roy Hodgson

    ReplyDelete
  14. I am for one,thank god that you're back to writing (and posting?) jamie. I agree with you on this. How come Manure can out-trophies us if the variance is so small? This is so unacceptable. Really hope FSG & King Kenny can out-turn this.

    ReplyDelete
  15. fallen_from_grace_a7:33 am, September 07, 2011

    Am I just being incredibly blond here, or was last season with hodgson not the 10 - 11 season and as such not listed in your findings and thus can't be held to account in this argument, yet a lot of the dialogue here seems to be referring to "last season". Maybe I'm missing something are we not now in the 11-12 season don't tell me I've been time traveling in my sleep again

    ReplyDelete
  16. Hi there - No, yo're right.  Thanks for that.  I've now made it clearer in the post that 2009-10 was Benitez's season, not Hodgson.  

    ReplyDelete
  17. No, in 2009-10, Rafa Benitez was in charge, not Roy Hodgson.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I am sure i heard recently that liverpool during this transfer window have managed to cut 25million a year of there annual wage bill by getting rid of some of the dead wood just another step in the right direction with the new owners and kenny in charge

    ReplyDelete
  19. Yes, the club has cut some of the wage bill, which is great.  

    ReplyDelete
  20. davewestausregularguest10:50 am, September 07, 2011

    Some people have loved to knock Benitez -hav'n't they Mr.Kanwar,but your own figures prove that he was able to keep the costs down during his spell at the club !, over the period he was manager, 2004-2009 ! Well,well ! 'Quite amazing that is'n't it!' And all your own work too ! RAFA was'n't so bad really was he???
    DaveWestAus.

    ReplyDelete
  21. davewestausregularguest11:00 am, September 07, 2011

    Amazing figures that prove how good RAFA BENITEZ was at Anfield! 2003 - 2009.
    MAN U figures(according to you), were approximately 30mil more than LFC's over those six years ? WELL DONE AGAIN RAFA - not just a great coach/tactician!

    ReplyDelete
  22. Hello Jaimie,

    Would you be kind enough to balance the books on all the transfer activities that have taken place since 01 January 2011 up to now?

    For example, no. of players signing in, no. of players leaving including those on loan and the net spending on players.

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  23. hmm, liverpool got a number of players out of the club this summer, but at what cost? When clubs offer players contracts, what they are basically doing is promising to pay a player a certain amount of money over a certain period of time, regardless of whether he plays or not. So when liverpool signed milan jovanovic they promised to pay him £3 million signing on fee, and £3 million a year for three years. Now they've already Paid £6 million, meaning that he would get another £6 million if he sat in the reserves for another two years. 

    The only way you can stop him from doing that is to get him to move to another club, and paying the difference in his wages. The highest wage in belgium is £20,000 a week, so Liverpool must still be paying the other £40,000 a week, over two years either on a weekly basis, or as a £4 million lump sum.  
    It's the problem that man city had with craig bellamy, but fortunately liverpool have come along to take the £95,000 a week striker off city's hands for 2 years. Bellamy was a great player for city in 2009-10, but with his knees, and at his age, and on those wages,  there is no way on earth that he can ever be value for money, and you could very easily be looking at another joe cole situation. 

    Again don't get me wrong here, joe cole isn't fit to lace craig bellamy's boots, but bellamy is 32, and is continually getting hamstring and knee injuries, and lets face it, not very likely to offer good value for the £10 million liverpool are going to be giving him over the next two years. 

    ReplyDelete
  24.  Davewestaus, Erm where do you get that, it just shows what we all knew that Benitez spent a lot of money every year on A) Players that were not good enough and B) Far too many of them, as in 50 odd players in the squad.

    I am sure that we will see in due course that Dalglish has cut the squad by about 20 players and maybe even trimmed the back room staff. Yet Dalglish has increased the quality of the squad whilst reducing the wage bill by maybe 35mill per annum. Also and I hate this term as it shouldnt really interest ordinary supporters, but accountants, Dalglish has a net spend of maybe 35mill approx.
    Dalglish is a much betterEPL  club manager than Benitez will ever be.

    ReplyDelete
  25. The accounts for the 2010-11 season won't be out until july 2012, but the figures are likely to be really horrific, with soaring costs, and falling income

    ReplyDelete
  26. this is not correct! 
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10249101
    This table shows ManUtd has much higher wages than you write. Get the facts right!

    ReplyDelete
  27. No, it is you who needs to get your facts right and understand what you're reading before passing judgment.  First, the article states that those figures are for 2008-9 only; second, the timeframes for calculating wage figures are different - the club accounts record the amount spent during the club's financial year, usuall June-June or July-July.  Obviously, the figures will be different in that context than if you calculate over a calendar year.

    Please see the comment above to Colm - I posted the page from United's accounts. Are you saying that club itself is wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  28. Well said DaveWestAus !!!!I have been saying for ages that Benitez got some unjustified stick, Rightly so, he got some stick,  I just felt one aweful season (finishing 7th) didn't justify his sacking. I personally felt he desrved another season to get things right.Also as pointed out in this section by Ronny, Again if we would have had our current owners instead of Hicks and Gillet, then we would have surely won the League under Benitez.... Players he signed instead of the real players he wanted, are 2 completly different things.Finally, and this is what really angers me with the Benitez bashing brigade,Before Rafa Benitez came to Liverpool football club, (not including home grown players) I think Ian Rush back in 1987 was the last player we actually sold for a profit. I certainly can't remember player since Rushie making us a profit.Now compare all that with the players that Rafa signed, and even NOW, we are making profit on our signings.Obviously the main ones are  Torres, Mascherano and Alonso, but even the fringe / youth players have been sold on for a profit.It's true he signed some bad players in his time at Anfield (hell even Ferguson has signed his fair share of duffers!), but compared to Roy Hodgson (and he only had 5 months) Rafa was a genius..I just think L.F.C sells players off far too cheaply, even our reserves and youth players have been sold for peanuts recently.I still can't believe we only made half a million on Meireles. Sickening when you think about it.Your thoughts Jamie ???Sparq

    ReplyDelete
  29. Simple answer here,

    When Rafa took control of Liverpool, we were struggling to get in to the top 3/4 of the Premiership, whilst United ALREADY had a Title winning team.

    Obviously it's easier to maintain a title winning team, than to completley overhaul a team failing to get in to the Champions League.

    Also Benitez always had to sell before he could buy, Slur Alex Ferguson did not.

    Chelsea then won the Premier league, but also spent massively, whilst also having a team already challenging for the League under Ranieri.....


    Whilst Benitez's highest spent was £20m TWICE, (Torres and Aqualani)
    At one point United had 6 midfielders costing in the region of £16m -£18m (yes 6 midfielders)

    People are quick to judge Benitez, Torres was an amazing signing and made £30m profit. Aqualani was just not given time, 3 managers didn't help either.

    Compare this to a  very strong United team.

    (although this doesn't directly relate to Benitez's time at Anfield, it goes to show what vast money United has spent over the last 10 years)

    Remember, a general rule of thumb,  Strikers cost the most, then Midfielders, Defenders and Goalies are normally the least expensive.


    Nearly 10 years ago, United paid £30m for Rio Ferdinand.
    Then 7 years ago £30m for Rooney.

    They spent big on, Nani, Carric, Hargreaves, Anderson, Valencia to name a few.

    Yes Benitez bought lots of players and showed the door to many more,
    but Benitez was buying up all the promising youth with a view to sell on at a profit, then buy a world class player, Alonso, Mascherano, Torres, Reina, Agger ect.
    Obviously should one of the players be exceptional, he would be a 1st teamer and would have saved the club a fortune, Suso, Pacheco ect.

    ReplyDelete
  30. hmm, when rafa took over liverpool, man utd had just had their worst season since 1990-91, finished one place ahead of liverpool, and needed surgery every bit as radical as that at liverpool. The team that had won 4 out of 5 titles between 98-99 and 2002-3 was coming to an end and needed to be completely revamped, and it took ferguson another two years to get it right. 

    Ferguson also has to sell to buy, and in the decade in question united have sold van nistelrooy, ronaldo,  Cole, Stam, veron, beckham, neville, Richardson, Rossi, Campbell, Foster. Those are only the ones for over 4 million. Those players alone brought in £180 million. 

    I think that benitez's problem was that he just wasn't a very good judge of signing players, and then he wasn't very good at getting the best out of a lot of them while they were there, before swiftly moving most of them on.  He had a number of notable early successes largely based on his knowledge of the spanish league. Xabi Alonso was the best young midfielder in spain, pepe reina was the best spanish goalkeeper not called casillas, and indeed would prove to be much better suited to the english game than casillas would ever have been. 

    Fernando torres was the best young striker in spain, and javier mascherano was the best young defensive  midfielder that argentina had produced in nearly 20 years. These were all brilliant players, but not necessarily the hardest to spot. The rest of his 90 or so signings were not as good, and if you look at a list of liverpool's signings since the arrival of torres and benayoun, and you will see that basically none of them were remotely good enough. Most of them have since left the club, having sucked transfer fees and wages out of the club. 

    it's not a question of having a lot of money to spend, but being a good judge of player. Liverpool fans should ask who exactly scouted and approved the signing of Glenn Johnson, Alberto Aquilani, robbie Keane, Ryan babel. then you look at some of the other players who were signed seemingly at random, like jovanovic, kyrgiakos...

    The world is full of players, the manager of liverpool doesn't have the biggest budget in world football but it's comfortably in the top ten. they can offer wages and fees that the clubs outside of the top two in spain, the top two in italy and man city and chelsea in england can only dream of. What liverpool need to do is use their scouting system to identify good players, who can fit into english football, and sign them at a relatively young age, when they are relatively cheap and on relatively low wages, and this is where liverpool fall down. 

    indeed while the signing of coates, enrique and adam would suggest that liverpool are starting to sign some of the right type of players, and getting some decent value, the signings of carroll, downing and henderson are so expensive that even if they turn out to be quite good, at a cost of £70 million and at £10 million a year in wages, they will still represent bad value. 

    ReplyDelete
  31. hmmm will have to disagree. http://www.transferleague.co.uk/
    this site shows that liverpool have spend more than man utd, both gross and net spend since 1992 to date. Its not true that SAF did not have to sell. Whilst i concede that the site is not 100% accurate, i would think that it is a fair reflection of the amount of money spent. man utd did spend big but they also sold players to fund the purchases.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Tom - transferleague is not a reliable site in the slightest.  The figures it uses are based on media speculation and guesswork, not fact.  

    Having said that, it *is* true that Liverpool has a higher gross spend over the last 20 years, but United has a slightly higher net spend.  I've examined the accounts of both clubs and the results are clear: http://www.liverpool-kop.com/2010/10/exclusive-liverpool-vs-man-united.html

    ReplyDelete
  33. I think it would have been more accurate to use the phrase 'slightly higher' for LFC gross spend (8%) as opposed to the 11% higher ManU net spend.

    Thats if you'd like to purport to be unbiased?

    ReplyDelete
  34. 6 seasons, 1 legitimate title challenge and he wanted to rebuild another team. How do people continue to make the argument that Benitez deserved more time???

    And for the continued argument that he was hamstrung by not buying every player rumoured with a transfer that eventually turned out to be world class, remember that Real & Barcelona aside, every managers has to just "make do" with his signings sometimes. Continued success makes it easier to attract first choice signings however, and Benitez did not deliver the necessary success to make Liverpool a more attractive club to potential singings despite all the advantages at his disposal (our history, decent wages, Champions League football just for coming 4th etc).

    ReplyDelete
  35. The most important fact is that Man U haven't just had 'slightly higher' amounts of success in recent times - they've absolutely swept the floor with us.

    Too many excuses our made at our club and it needs to stop asap (at least Dalglish doesn't seem to have this inferiority complex and we can hopefully see ourselves knocking Man U back off of that perch imminently!)

    ReplyDelete
  36. Look purely at net spend and transfers like Robbie Keane seem pretty smart. Take gross spend into account and suddenly you realise what ridiculous decisions have been made at the club at times.

    ReplyDelete
  37. lmao it's amazing how somebody can look at the figures and come to that conclusion!

    Somehow you look at Liverpool spending approx £30m less over 6 years than a team competing every year for the major trophies, while we struggled to be a top 4 team (and were in fact left with a 7th placed team) and come to the conclusion that this is proof of Rafa's worth as a great coach/tactician?!? :-o

    ReplyDelete
  38. Liverpool won the Champions League under Benitez, won the FA Cup, won the Super Cup, and were runners-up in the Premier League, League Cup and World Club Cup. Not a bad return for six years. Plus we then sold three of his best signings - Mascherano, Alonso and Torres - at massive profits. And could have done the same with Reina. He also managed to keep Gerrard at the club. Those are the 'stats' we should be looking at. Football isn't about numbers.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Average league position under Benitez? 4th (with one second place finish)
    Average league position in 6 years prior to Benitez? 4th (with one second place finish)

    Those are the 'stats' we should be looking at. The numbers do count

    ReplyDelete
  40. True, that is the point. Slight use of vocab is unnecessary.

    ReplyDelete
  41. I checked with the swiss ramble, and your figures for man utd are as you state for the football club. The bigger figure that you see quoted more often is for the redfootball group as a whole, so it includes the salaries of the directors and the like.  To be honest I was very surprised to see that liverpool's wage bill in 2009-10 was higher than man utd's

    ReplyDelete
  42. Ferguson has had to sell to buy? Seriously where do you get this stuff???  Who did Ferguson sell to buy Rooney, Berbatov, Ferdinand, Veron, Carrick, Saha, Anderson, Hargreaves, Nani...I could go on. Why make stuff up to use as a rod to beat a manager who did his absolute best for the club? You pathetically use examples of Kyrgiakos and Jovanovic yet Kyrgiakos cost 1m and Jovanovic was on a free. Do you honestly think these players were his top targets? Strange how you even want to take credit away from Benitez for he good players he bought. 'Not exactly hard to spot', yeah because everyone was raving about those players before benitez bought them weren't they? No-one had hardly heard of Alonso, Macherano was rotting in west hams reserves, Nobody was willing to take a chance on Torres. Lets also conveniently forget he signed Agger, Skrtel, Arbeloa, Lucas, Garcia, Kuyt and Rodriguez. Let's also forget he completely overhauled the academy bringing in Kenny Dalglish, Rodolfo Borrell and Jose Segura as well as top players from all over the world. And finally if you look at his last 2 seasons 08/09 we finished 2nd and desperately needed to add a bit of quality and what happened? Alonso wanted to leave, Rafa brought in Aquilani and was told the funds were there to buy Steven Jovetic from Fiorentina all of a sudden that changed, the money dries up and we end up fu*ked with a net spend of -6m. Would it have happened with our present owners? Not a chance. Kenny is reaping the benefits of having Comoli and NESV to work with, not to mention the academy Rafa but so much into and finally the players he signed that still play for our club week in week out. Add to that a certain night in May '05, an FA cup, regular champions league football and some absolutely amazing champions league nights and a 1-4 drubbing at the theatre of filth and I say thanks a million Rafa, you were a fantastic manager and leave a wonderful legacy behind and I wish you every success in the future. Jaime, would love to see what the up to date figures are like for Rafa in terms of money spent on players by Rafa VS Money recouped on players bought by Rafa. Would make a good read and a fair relection on how he personally did financially on transfers.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Please link to sources for your figures because they are simply not true. ManU, based on their most recent filings, spent £153M and £132M on wages in the past two years respectively:

    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qYCAyDkBnRs/Tmc2lnOmkHI/AAAAAAAAD7I/-p7ywEBwabM/s400/2%2BUnited%2BProfit.jpg

    The Liverpool wage bill for the past 2 years has been £110 and £90M respectively.

    ReplyDelete
  44. No, you are wrong.  And before you start slagging off my figures perhaps you should do some proper research first. 

    The figures are taken from the club's official accounts, which means they are calculated from June-June (or July-July in Liverpool's case). The figures are not for the calendar year.  Additionally, the higher figures to which you refer are for the entire group, which includes salaries for Directors, plus bonuses etc.  The account figures are most accurate because they are only related to employees.

    The figures ARE true, or are you suggesting that the respective club's accounts break the law by reporting false figures?  The figures you have used are inaccurate.  Additionally, football accountants such as Deloitte use the same figures as me.  Are they wrong.

    See the attached snippets from the accounts.  Please note the dates, and the highlighted box. As you will clearly see, the figures are correct.

    ReplyDelete
  45. The figures I linked to in the image are taken straight from the ManU accounts and they do not match yours. Pretty simple:

    http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2011/09/manchester-united-introducing-brand.html

    ReplyDelete
  46. No, your figures are taken from the GROUP accounts, not the individual club accounts. As I've explained already, the group accounts do not give an accurate picture of player salaries because they include payments to directors and all kinds of performance-based bonus payments that are only achieved after the fact.

    Group accounts are pointless when it comes to trying to pinpoint accurate wage figures, which is why they are not used, either by accounting companies like Deloitte, or journalists.

    I've already provided you with evidence of the accounts I've used, which are for the CLUB, not the group.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Steven: This shows how good SAF is. Man utd have always had players from our youth team hence the likes of scholes giggs wellbeck brown oshea evans cleverly etc have contributed. As Rafa benitez would say its a fact that Man utd have spent less then liverpool net spend wise.

    Liverpool fans are deluded thinking because 1 team has done better buys then consistently buying loads of players for a total of £30m a season that leave for virtually nothing a year later is having to sell to buy.

    http://www.transferleague.co.uk/league-tables/managers-comparisons.html
    SAF has spent less then most managers every season being 15th on the list. Liverpool have also outspent man utd since the premier league started.
    http://www.transferleague.co.uk/

    If someone bought 10 houses for £100k each and got rid for £50k a year later is describing rafa while SAF will buy 5 houses for £125k each and get rid for £100k.

    ReplyDelete
  48. I could spend time performing my own analysis to debunk yours, but I won’t. Nonetheless I will describe your analyses (including the one on net spend) as mere gunk, that should not be believed or given any credence.  And here is why…
     
    When I did my first course in econometrics at Uni, the lecturer made a point early on that has stayed with me ever since. He said, “as a principle, if the results of your analysis contradict economic theory, your analysis is wrong.”
     
    Now I know if you take this principle and apply it widely, it would seem to suggest that there shall never be any new discoveries in science (social or laboratory). However, what the lecturer was trying to say was simply this, if your analysis flies in the face of conventional wisdom, it is more likely the case that your analysis is wrong rather than conventional wisdom being wrong.
     
    What the results of your analyses (including the one on net spend) appears to suggest is that Liverpool and Manchester United have been on a level pegging financially for the last 20 years. Any Liverpool fan (actually any football fan) when faced with such a suggestion, would have to admit that it simply does not pass the smell test.

    It always felt that Manu had the upper hand when it came raising enough money for teh big players in terms of wages and transfer fees. Our transfer record before Carrol (financed by Abramovich) was 20 odd million for Torres. United have spent more than that on defenders. They routinely spent 20 - 30 odd million for years on end. The smell test...
     
    (In fact, whenever I talk to Liverpool fans who are old enough to remember the good old days, they seem to suggest that even back in the 70s and 80s, Manchester United appeared to have a sturdier financial backbone than Liverpool (i.e. bigger Stadium, more fans etc))
     
    If I do have some time, I will try to do a similar analysis. But in the mean time I would urge you to have another look at your figures and check to see if there is anything that might be off.
     
    PS: If the main premise of your argumentation is that Liverpool fans make too many excuses, I would have to agree.

    ReplyDelete
  49. I could spend time performing my own analysis to debunk yours, but I won’t. Nonetheless I will describe your analyses (including the one on net spend) as mere gunk, that should not be believed or given any credence.  And here is why…
     
    When I did my first course in econometrics at Uni, the lecturer made a point early on that has stayed with me ever since. He said, “as a principle, if the results of your analysis contradict economic theory, your analysis is wrong.”
     
    Now I know if you take this principle and apply it widely, it would seem to suggest that there shall never be any new discoveries in science (social or laboratory). However, what the lecturer was trying to say was simply this, if your analysis flies in the face of conventional wisdom, it is more likely the case that your analysis is wrong rather than conventional wisdom being wrong.
     
    What the results of your analyses (including the one on net spend) appears to suggest is that Liverpool and Manchester United have been on a level pegging financially for the last 20 years. Any Liverpool fan (actually any football fan) when faced with such a suggestion, would have to admit that it simply does not pass the smell test.
     
    (In fact, whenever I talk to Liverpool fans who are old enough to remember the good old days, they seem to suggest that even back in the 70s and 80s, Manchester United appeared to have a sturdier financial backbone than Liverpool (i.e. bigger Stadium, more fans etc)
     
    If I do have some time, I will try to do a similar analysis. But in the mean time I would urge you to have another look at your figures and check to see if there is anything that might be off.
     
    PS: If the main premise of your argumentation is that Liverpool fans make too many excuses, I would have to agree.

    ReplyDelete
  50. I have the MUFC accounts in front of me (2011 accounts, company number 5370076) and they show emolument costs of £131,689,000 for 2010 and £123,120 for 2009.

    On the basis that all of the figures in the original article are therefore clearly nonsense/incomparable I don't think there is much point commenting further.

    For the record though, the current ACTUAL table of wages (based on latest accounts) are:

    1) Chelsea (09/10 accs) £174m
    2) Man City (10/11 accs) £173m
    3) Man U (10/11 accs) £153m
    4) Arsenal £124m
    5) Liverpool. £114m

    ReplyDelete