A proper preview would tell you all about the opposition. This will do no such thing. That's because I am terrible at previews and thus, this preview is terrible. What I'm going to do instead is take us back to the early days of the Premier League and remember the most famous Blackburn side of living memory in order to make a point of sorts about football today (both literally 'today' and more figuratively 'in the modern age.'
It's generally assumed that Blackburn winning the league was an anomaly. A slip in the space time continuum caused by the weight of Jack Walker's wallet. At the time, it certainly felt like it. This short article details how naive we were to feel that way...
The side that won the league cost £14.7 million to put together - as this article points out, many of the key performers were signed relatively cheaply and Rovers spent less than some other sides that season. There's no doubt that their spending was way out of line in comparison with their income and what we'd expect a town club to pay for players, but none the less, it bears little resemblance to the kind of sums that a Premier League winning side might cost today.
£14.7 million in old money is about £32 million in today's cash. (my source: the Bank of England inflation calculator) That's normal money though. Football money is wildly different. Much was made of the incredible achievement of Leicester City, winning the League with a squad that cost next to nothing (a mere £58 million according to ESPN sport) but in comparison to the Blackburn side of 1994/95, they were big spenders (in REAL terms.)
Of course, Leicester's achievement was a much greater shock - they weren't buying the best players in the country for significant fees. They were relying on bargains, nobodies and has-beens in a way that Rovers simply weren't - yes, a few clubs outspent Rovers, but hardly anyone outspent Leicester. Comparing them with Rovers is kind of meaningless because football spending has exploded so wildly in the time that has passed.
That's kind of the point though. Rovers were the last of their kind. Leicester may have been a fairy tale, but they were financed to a point that dwarves Blackburn's spending, that makes Uncle Jack look like a miser. They were powered by the money of a foreign consortium. Jack Walker was a hometown boy, the kind of figure that simply no longer exists (Delia Smith aside) at the top level of the game. Why is this? Why can clubs no longer dream of a local man/woman made good who will take them down the road to glory?
Put very simply, the cost of football money is far higher than the cost of other money.
At the beginning of that season, Blackburn signed Chris Sutton for £5 million to break the English transfer record. That figure, at the time, seemed outlandish, ridiculous, space age money. 5 million quid is worth pretty much exactly £10.5 million today in the wider world. The current transfer record is £100 million (Jack Grealish.) Whilst very different players, both Sutton and Grealish were up and coming prospects, taken from mid table sides by a team with title ambitions. Had football followed inflation, Grealish would have cost roughly twice what Sutton did - instead, he cost about twenty times as much.
We've not even mentioned wages yet. The average wage in the top flight in 1994-95 was £116,448 - a figure that today would be worth £246,000. - That today represents the weekly take home pay of some premier league footballers... The average Premier League wage is over £3 million per year. That's an increase of a factor of around 26!
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| Former Scunthorpe player Mark Atkins... |
It's generally assumed that Blackburn winning the league was an anomaly. A slip in the space time continuum caused by the weight of Jack Walker's wallet. At the time, it certainly felt like it. This short article details how naive we were to feel that way...
The side that won the league cost £14.7 million to put together - as this article points out, many of the key performers were signed relatively cheaply and Rovers spent less than some other sides that season. There's no doubt that their spending was way out of line in comparison with their income and what we'd expect a town club to pay for players, but none the less, it bears little resemblance to the kind of sums that a Premier League winning side might cost today.
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| Either a Premier League CEO rushing to put more money in the furnace or just some normal bloke off to pay his energy bills... |
£14.7 million in old money is about £32 million in today's cash. (my source: the Bank of England inflation calculator) That's normal money though. Football money is wildly different. Much was made of the incredible achievement of Leicester City, winning the League with a squad that cost next to nothing (a mere £58 million according to ESPN sport) but in comparison to the Blackburn side of 1994/95, they were big spenders (in REAL terms.)
Of course, Leicester's achievement was a much greater shock - they weren't buying the best players in the country for significant fees. They were relying on bargains, nobodies and has-beens in a way that Rovers simply weren't - yes, a few clubs outspent Rovers, but hardly anyone outspent Leicester. Comparing them with Rovers is kind of meaningless because football spending has exploded so wildly in the time that has passed.
That's kind of the point though. Rovers were the last of their kind. Leicester may have been a fairy tale, but they were financed to a point that dwarves Blackburn's spending, that makes Uncle Jack look like a miser. They were powered by the money of a foreign consortium. Jack Walker was a hometown boy, the kind of figure that simply no longer exists (Delia Smith aside) at the top level of the game. Why is this? Why can clubs no longer dream of a local man/woman made good who will take them down the road to glory?
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| YES!!! More parachute payments!!! |
Put very simply, the cost of football money is far higher than the cost of other money.
At the beginning of that season, Blackburn signed Chris Sutton for £5 million to break the English transfer record. That figure, at the time, seemed outlandish, ridiculous, space age money. 5 million quid is worth pretty much exactly £10.5 million today in the wider world. The current transfer record is £100 million (Jack Grealish.) Whilst very different players, both Sutton and Grealish were up and coming prospects, taken from mid table sides by a team with title ambitions. Had football followed inflation, Grealish would have cost roughly twice what Sutton did - instead, he cost about twenty times as much.
We've not even mentioned wages yet. The average wage in the top flight in 1994-95 was £116,448 - a figure that today would be worth £246,000. - That today represents the weekly take home pay of some premier league footballers... The average Premier League wage is over £3 million per year. That's an increase of a factor of around 26!
What has any of this got to do with today's game though? Well, nothing and everything... It gives absolutely no insight as to how Bradley Dack and that lad who isn't from Chile will play, but it serves to illustrate something quite fundamental about the nature of modern football - we've looked at the cost of running a title winning Premier League club in 1994-95 and we've discovered that it was considerably better value for money - if we cast our eye a little further down the league at the cost of a championship club we can see something remarkable.
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| Hang on, what do you mean, my money is only worth a couple of lads from Portugal these days? That's good money that is! |
The average wage in the championship is reported variously to be 'around 200k per annum' up to 'around £1.5 million' - whichever figure we take, we can see that in real terms (i.e. taking the rate of inflation as set out by the Bank of England) - it now costs more money than it would have cost Jack Walker to run a Premier League club to run a Championship football club.
Transfers are little different - Fulham this summer spent more on Harry Wilson than Chris Sutton was worth in 1994 in real terms. That is not the biggest signing by a championship club in history by quite some margin. It's just the first transfer I found on google that fits that criteria.
The problem in the Championship is huge. Yes, potential income from player sales is likely to be bigger than it was in 1994 by quite some margin and yes, clubs get more TV money than they did, but for a club like us, the TV money is much smaller than it is for the clubs in receipt of parachute payments and the difficulty of selling players is also highlighted by the make up of Blackburn's squad. Only Robbie Slater, Henning Berg and Richard Witschge were not UK or Irish born. Consequently, much of Blackburn's investment in players was from other English clubs.
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| Every year, Pep proves he's the *best* manager by buying fashionable clothes and making sure he's at the team with *the most money* |
Manchester City's current squad only contains 6 UK/Irish players - consequently, much less of their spending is focussed on the English market. Essentially, yes, if you can convince a top side to take one of your players, you'll earn more money than you did, but it's much less likely than it was that your players will end up in a title winning side (and thus going for top dollar - Alan Wright being an salient example)
In conclusion, what all of this shows is the scale of the challenge that Simon Sadler faces in getting us to where we need to be. In the real world the value of the pound has increased since 1994 - in the football world, it's increased far more. It is not unrealistic to suggest, that to achieve promotion, a side in our position may need to invest more money than Blackburn Rovers invested in 1994-95 to win the actual league. That's a frightening thought if you can remember that far back and recall the fuss made about their spending at the time.
It's why we should not lose sight of perspective. This league is not easy. The finances are not easy. Of course we've every right to be frustrated at the woeful showing at Deepdale, but we also have every right to be frustrated at the way money dictates the game to an absurd degree now. We've got an owner who has invested in players and infrastructure and clearly has plans for the club. The cost of progress is potentially huge and, by establishing ourselves as a seemingly competitive championship club, we've already taken an enormous step forward.
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| Future Champions League winner James Husband. |
In conclusion - I just want to see us go and give it a go. Less of the possession for possession's sake, more putting pressure on Rovers and getting the fans behind some decent, solid effort. It might be nice to see some of the players we've not seen a lot of as there's not a lot of space in the squad, so we need to know if these players have potential in the Championship or not and decide what to do in the summer as a result of that. Rovers are under way more pressure than we are. Let's enjoy it. On the pitch and off. Play with a bit of freedom and take a fucking risk!!! Make some noise, score some goals. Be magic. Be tangerine
Onward.
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