Transfer/Wage budget for next season

[bs1982 22]

The press have widely speculated that our budget for next season will be £5M (plus any income from sales) but there seems to be a lot of confusion on here as to what we will be able to achieve with this as it is for renewing contracts, transfer fees and wages for new signings so I thought I would get the calculator out and see what this really means. It is all based entirely on the figures branded about in the press however so could be very inaccurate.

Our wage bill was reportedly £16M last season and the bank have agreed that we can offer wages up to this again but this is the absolute limit. This does not seem very high so I assume that we will utilise the full amount here.

The squad size for last season was 21 which includes youngsters Fleck, Wilson and Little. WS has reportedly stated he thought this was a very small squad so I would assume he would like to go into next season with at least the same squad size.

Three players have currently left (Novo, Beasley and Smith) and another three have been offered new contracts (Weir, Boyd and Broadfoot) but it is unknown if they will sign them. Two players have returned from loans onto the wage bill (Webster and Velicka). That means we currently have 17 contracted players for next season. If the 6 out of contract players were on a combined 60K per week then the wage bill will be approximately 50K per week less considering the players returning from loan where we were meant to be subsiding their wages.

Sorry for repeating all the boring figures that you will no doubt have heard numerous times there but if these figures are accurate here is what it means for each scenario:

None of the out of contract players sign new contracts

We have 50K to spent on wages, £2.4M on transfer/signing on fees which ideally needs to be spent on 4 new players

None of the out of contract players sign new contracts and Wilson leaves for approximately £2M

We have 51K to spent on wages, £4.4M on transfer/signing on fees which ideally need to be spent on 5 new players

None of the out of contract players sign new contracts and Wilson leaves for approximately £2M, Bougherra leaves for about £5M

We have 65K to spent on wages, £9.4M on transfer/signing on fees which ideally need to be spent on 6 new players

Boyd, Weir and Broadfoot sign new contracts and nobody else leaves

We have 15K to spent on wages, £2.4M on transfer/signing on fees which needs to be spent on 1 new player to keep same squad size

Boyd, Weir and Broadfoot sign new contracts and Wilson leaves

We have 16K to spent on wages, £4.4M on transfer/signing on fees which needs to be spent on 2 new players to keep same squad size

Boyd, Weir and Broadfoot sign new contracts and Wilson, Bougherra leave

We have 31K to spent on wages, £9.4M on transfer/signing on fees which needs to be spent on 3 new players to keep same squad size

Obviously that is just a shortened version and their are lots of other outcomes if different players leave but that covers what the papers have said today about who is likely to leave. I will leave it to you guys to speculate about who might be avilable in our price range but based on these figures it would seem that we could just about afford one quality addition like Ledley but the stories for Petrov on 40 grand a week are crazy unless he was getting a huge signing on fee with lower wages.

[bs1982 22]

It should be noted that I was assuming that our £16M wage budget for last year was after Mendes left in January. If it was £16M before that then the outcomes will be a lot more optimistic than stated as we was one of the highest earners.

[KingKirk 25,647]

Or unless Ellis comes in then we might be able to afford 40k a week, All I no is we are on the up and thats good to see