I spotted this wonderful post by OutByEaster? on Villa Talk late last night and re-tweeted a link to it, but as most of you would have missed that and it’s so good, I thought it worth dropping a quick post here to draw your attention to it.

It’s a long article, but it’s most definitely worth your time, but I’d suggest one or two minor caveats. The following paragraph is a little misleading, but it’s extremely timely since it follows hot on the heels of my post about the Villa and Tottenham wage bills.

I was going to ask you where all of this money is going, but I suspect you already know – it’s flowing steadily into the pockets of players and their agents.

Last year our wage bill went up by over £20m and the figures from the last published accounts show us paying out over £70m in salaries each year. Famously, that’s more than Tottenham and scarily it doesn’t include the small gaggle of players we picked up at the end of last summers transfer window. In 2007 it was just £25m.

Not too long ago, the Premier League rather grandly recommended that clubs should attempt to restrict their wage bill to 50% or less of their turnover. Not many managed it. Last season Manchester United managed 44% and Arsenal 46%, the ratio of our wages to revenues was a sobering 83.7%.

That means every time you spend £3 on a beer at Villa Park, £2.50 of it goes straight into the player’s pockets and straight out of the club.

[Emphasis mine]

I stress once again that the 84% wages/revenue ratio is for all employees at Aston Villa, not just the players. My best guess, based on what we do know, is that the player wages for the 2008/09 season were somewhere below 65% of revenue.

Without wishing to split hairs, that would mean more like £1.95 of your £3 for your pint goes “straight into the player’s pockets”, but the point stands. You could just as easily say that 14p of your pint is paying the interest on Randy’s loans to the club, but where do you end with such things?

Still, as I say, I don’t want to split hairs, the point is valid. The comparison with Arsenal, for instance, is a fair apples-to-apples comparison – although I think their wages/revenue ratio is even lower than stated (2008/09 revenue £313m, total wages £104m = 33%) – but it shouldn’t be forgotten how much money is derived from Champions League alone (as shown in the graph below) and at what cost to those clubs in terms of extra manpower?

Edit: Thanks to Swiss Ramble who pointed out that Arsenal’s £313m revenue I quoted above included £88m from the property development division. On closer inspection, the football segment did indeed pay 46% of its revenue to the employees. While I’m here, and I’ll make reference to this again in the future I’m sure, it’s also worth your time checking out Swiss Ramble’s analysis of the Villa accounts from back in April.

The graph also illustrates just how far behind we are in terms of earnings and how the steady approach Villa are employing is the only way to make progress without adverse risk. OutByEaster?’s article illustrates just how much risk we’re already taking.

Please take the time out to read the post, it’s worth it. My feeling is that these are exactly the issues the average football fan has a very limited grasp of, yet they somehow feel that Martin O’Neill should be listening to their opinion about transfers.

That’s like taking geography advice from someone who thinks the world is flat!

(By the way, apologies for the atrocious river pun in the headline if your spotted it!!)