People were discussing here a few days ago how the new stadium affected our transfer business, they mostly focused on the profile of the transfers (which I think is missing the point a little bit, the stadium is about increasing our ability to spend in the market, it's not really supposed to attact higher profile signings by its own), so I decided to compare the pre-stadium spending of Spurs under ENIC (net spend from 01/02 to 18/19) with the post-stadium spending of Spurs under ENIC (19/20 to 23/24).
I'll compare it with the rest of the top six minus Chelsea (simply because they've been a massive outlier under Boehly, stretching FFP with their amortisation shenaingans).
In addition I'll be comparing Tottenham's net spend with United's specifically, because while some teams have gone up and down in spending, United have always been the Northern star of extravagent transfer windows.
All the numbers are from transfermarkt and are in Euros.
01/02 to 18/19, or the pre-stadium period:
Average net spend of United, Woolwich, Liverpool, City from 01/02 to 18/19: 782.53m
Net spend of United from 01/02 to 18/19: 940.48m
Net spend of Spurs from 01/02 to 18/19: 266.75m
19/20 to 23/24, or the post-stadium period:
Average net spend of United, Woolwich, Liverpool, City from 19/20 to 23/24: 492.95m
Net spend of United from 19/20 to 23/24: 701.81m
Net spend of Spurs from 19/20 to 23/24: 510.03m
We went from spending 34.1% of what the rest of the big six (minus Chelsea) spent on average from 01/02 to 18/19, to spending 103% of the average of the rest of the big six minus Chelsea from 19/20 to 23/24.
We went from spending 28.36% of what United spent to 72.67% of United’s spending.
Granted, this is only a piece of the puzzle, when you don't consider wages or clubs bolstering their finances through the sale of academy talents, and you have to consider that while the stadium bolstered our spending, the building of the stadium obviously constrained us. Overall though, I do think there's an obvious closing of the gap from the financial elite of England (and the world), though the gap between us and the true monsters like United will likely always be there.
Thank you for this informative post mate.
Annual Payroll - 2016/2017 - £71,261,400
Annual Payroll - 2017/2018 - £80,417,800
Annual Payroll - 2018/2019 - £90,525,000
Annual Payroll - 2019/2020 - £106,380,000
Annual Payroll - 2020/2021 - £135,786,000
Annual Payroll - 2021/2022 - £110,416,000
Annual Payroll - 2022/2023 - £117,000,000
Annual Payroll - 2023/2024 - £110,656,000 - for some reason Maddison, Solomon, Johnson, VDV, Udogie and Veliz are not included so I would assume that number will rise, lets be fair, by the average salary overall of 3.5 million per player @ 6 players is 21,000,000 so roughly 130,000,000.
In that time Woolwich went from
2016/17 - 102,000,000 to
2023/24 - 174,000,000
Liverpool went from
2016/17 - 90,000,000 to
2023/24 - 147,000,000
Man U went from
2016/17 - 152,000,000 to
2023/24 - 214,000,000
So our wage bill has nearly doubled since moving out of the stadium - we are yet to catch up on our rivals' but we are clearly in a better position now to be offering a wages we could never have dreamed of back in 2016/17.
For context, back then United had 5+ players on 200k+ a week
"Yeah, but everyone else has spent more as well, so it doesn't count "
Yet another myth destroyed.
