Finance in English Football

We have a massive problem in English Football that revolves around money.  Today it was announced that championship club Portsmouth has gone into administration for the second time in two years.

The problem is, that despite all the Premier League TV funding being split evenly between the twenty clubs in the top flight (approximately £40m), the difference in wealth is phenomenal. Manchester City announced a loss of £197m after the last financial year, and yet they can still afford to pay the majority of their first team players £100,000+ per week; it is disgusting!  The teams who are in the bottom half of the Premier League, Wigan, Bolton and Blackburn, for example, struggle to get by and hardly have any transfer funds available to improve their teams because, in comparison to the top six clubs in England, they are not well known around the world.

I know the FA have put a limit of twenty-five players that a team can register to take part in the Premier League and the English cups, but that does not limit the amount of pay that the clubs can pay those players.  Why not introduce a salary cap like they do in the MLS or in Rugby.  Set the salary cap to a level that is acceptable to the tier of football they are in to allow the smaller clubs of English football to at least give a decent fight for survival.  Even if the FA just put a cap on the seventeen players who are selected for for the match, it would give the smaller clubs a chance.

I will use Wigan, who I support by the way, as my example.  The Latics are currently in their sixth year in the Premier League, and despite finishing 10th in their first season, they have never finished above 12th since.  Their second season resulted in a very tense final day safety 2-1 victory at Sheffield United, to finish 17th, and in the last two seasons they have finished 16th. Despite having appeared in the arguably most competitive league in the world, they have never garnered any extra income from advertising or sponsorships because companies would rather sponsor the big six clubs that are known globally.

Something needs to be done about the money in football, the gap between the top six clubs (Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur) and the rest of English football needs to be closed.  Cap the amount that clubs can pay their players, and it would give the smaller clubs a chance to at least taste the success the big clubs have enjoyed for so long.