How much money does a footballer earn?

I was browsing the Royal Statistical Society website, like you do, and came across this article [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] that they posted after a radio phone-in which I didn't hear.

Anyway that article contains this passage "League 2 players earned £ 39,000" in 2009/10 and linked to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

All of which is quite interesting. I wonder what happened in League 2 2006-7 for that year's wage to be so low?

Well I hope Brenty doesn't read that, he can't afford us to even be in Lg 1.

It puts all that "competitive budget" stuff into context, doesn't it.

I think this shows the massive disparity in the haves and have nots of the football world. The premier league really has become the be all and end all of football these days, yes the lower league players do earn a good wage by any standard but a typical journeyman definitely can't retire at 32-35 on those wages. The only question is how can the premier league continue to increase salaries at those rates and still remain viable. The amount of people who will have or will pay the extra to sky is not infinite and will have to level out at sometime surely?

I think the 39k must be an average and include youth team pro's etc.

A decent and reasonably busy electrician or plumber would earn more than that.

Yes it is an average and yes it does include the types of player you suggest. Which isn't the point. Or perhaps it is. Does a 17 year old apprentice plumber earn, say, £500/week?

If we have 20 1st teamers and 20 youth players then we need to budget for 40 players earning about £40k each per year. This is £1.6m.

It is an average so the highly paid senior pros are levelled out against the 1st year apprentices and so on. And it is taken from data across all of the clubs in the division.

It also says "NB All figures reflect basic pay. Typically increases 50-100 per cent with appearances/bonuses".

Not that Argyle have been paying out too many win bonuses of late!

Furthermore league 2 wages have decreased in the past couple of seasons have they not?

Tim Chown wrote:

It also says "NB All figures reflect basic pay. Typically increases 50-100 per cent with appearances/bonuses".

Not that Argyle have been paying out too many win bonuses of late!

That would put the salaries in to a bracket more in keeping with the perception of what a pro earns, even at League 2 level.

An average league 2 footballer earns approx £40-£50k a year. I speak regularly with a football agent and clubs in the past 2-3 years have really cut back. Witness the amount of players who are out of contract each year and remain free agents. A "jobbing" L2 player I would guess is on a basic of £30k with incentives added on.

I hasten to add that the agent I speak to operates mainly in the Midlands and has never dealt with Argyle but has had some dealing with Exeter. I would guess that our salaries for the same shite are higher.

There is also a move towards paying managers a minimal salary and then adding in lots of incentives.

Read this...it will make you weep what you think Fletcher was on...

No Win No Fee

I would say that yer average footballer "earns" something less than half what they get paid.

Football is just the craziest of markets where "star" players get paid far too much for far too little at the lower levels, any striker who shoots his team into the Premiership is worth his weight in whatever this weeks commodity of choice might be, over £100 million pounds for coming last next season when you add in the parachute, whereas should Curo's goals spawn our way back to L1 it would probably send us bust with the bonuses that will have been written in to everybody's contracts.

There seems to be no real perspective with most clubs surviving on the edge of however much some rich Knob wants to throw at them, the few exceptions like ECFC struggle to attract the right calibre of player at whatever level we happen to be at, even when we in the Conference we regularly missed out on players who could get more money at clubs who drew half the crowds we did.

Maybe this "financial fair play" nonsense will flatten the playing field a tad although I am not sure that will benefit the clubs in a weaker financial position as the bigger money boys might well wise up and profit from the general downward pressure on wages.

ECFC's top earning player is Bowser whose basic is around 2 grand a week, for that we have seen the some total of bugger all decent performances in two years topped off by the worst penalty miss in football history.

Clubs need to MTFU and live within their means which must ultimately mean bringing on local youngsters, difficult for the likes of thee and us with the dearth of local big boys to pick up drop outs from, bringing kids through ain't cheap, picking up young'uns that have had 6 or 7 years in a Prem Academy is a far more cost effective way to do it, not an option option to the likes of we.

The whole system is geared towards the big clubs though, the new EPPP is all designed for the big clubs to get all the best young players and if needs be take them from the smaller ones at as little a cost as they can. Lord Tisdale you're right but released players from the CAT 1 academies will probably get a chance at a CAT 2 one before they move to smaller clubs like the Devon ones at which point they could be relatively disillusioned and lacking any real match time. The smaller clubs will never compete if a CAT 1 club wants a player from a CAT 3 which I believe argyle will be it is a pittance in compensation compared to what the CAT 1 would get. The only way is to hope that the player or their parents want to stay and not chase the dream at a bigger club. The gulf will just get wider and wider unless the premiership bubble bursts but I can't see that happening anytime soon.