There’s been outbreaks in other cities in the last couple of months so should be fine.
There’s been outbreaks in other cities in the last couple of months so should be fine.
wait till QLD and WA shut their borders…
Wait a minute, Victorians are allowed to leave the country? If that’s correct why haven’t they all been deported?
Good news is I am heading to Melbourne for work today.
Alot in this. Cap also going up to 2.5mil, two more marquees, 20% of the league sold to private equity to fund production costs aiming to raise 100-150mil for 5 seasons, 10 only showing one game
Would have liked the MLS model of clubs buying an extra marquee for a fee that gets spread across the teams who havent used the extra slot.
QFT
This is key to keep your CCMs/Jets/future Gong/Tassie type entities going.
Two marquees, plus two extra outside the existing arrangements?
If there is not a massive infusion of some sort into the poorer clubs I can see a very uneven competition in the future.
Two or three clubs streaking ahead and 7 or 8 left to make up the numbers.
The salary cap will only be useful to keep a lid on the A-League level players wages. It will in no way make the competition competitive. Welcome to the Scottish League.
I can only hope that there is more in it than reported in the article, but worry for the future.
The confusing thing here is that, despite common usage, A-League has been officially using “Designated Player” rather than “Marquee Player” since at least the 2017-18 season.
The distinction, as I see it, about the MLS Designated Player rule compared to our “Marquee” rule is that the MLS player still contributes some amount toward the salary cap. Hopefully this is what is actually changing.
The existing arrangement, where the salary is entirely outside of the salary cap, is a significant distortion. Aside from the obvious benefit of signing two players who are likely to be better than other teams (not using marquees), what’s often missed is that having your two ‘free’ starters also significantly boosts the cap available for the rest of your squad compared to a club not utilising marquees.
If one club spends the $2.5m cap and has two marquees, while another club spends the $2.25m floor and has no marquees, the distribution of salaries might be:
| Squad Position | Rich Club (Spend) | Poor Club (Spend) | Rich Club (Cap) | Poor Club (Cap) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $900,000 | $300,000 | $0 | $300,000 |
| 2 | $700,000 | $280,000 | $0 | $280,000 |
| Starters 3-11 (Average) | $182,218 | $115,000 | $182,218 | $115,000 |
| Bench 12-16 (Average) | $122,007 | $77,000 | $122,007 | $77,000 |
| Depth 16-20 (Average) | $50,000 | $50,000 | $50,000 | $50,000 |
| Total | $4,100,000 | $2,250,000 | $2,500,000 | $2,250,000 |
Outside of the two main guys on either team, the rest of the match-day squad is almost 60% higher; one team’s bench players are on more than the other team’s starters.
If you imagine instead that the “marquees”, regardless of what they’re on, take up some salary cap (say $300,000), then this distortion almost completely disappears:
| Squad Position | Rich Club (Spend) | Poor Club (Spend) | Rich Club (Cap) | Poor Club (Cap) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $900,000 | $300,000 | $300,000 | $300,000 |
| 2 | $700,000 | $280,000 | $300,000 | $280,000 |
| Starters 3-11 (Average) | $133,627 | $115,000 | $133,627 | $115,000 |
| Bench 12-16 (Average) | $89,472 | $77,000 | $89,472 | $77,000 |
| Depth 16-20 (Average) | $50,000 | $50,000 | $50,000 | $50,000 |
| Total | $3,500,000 | $2,250,000 | $2,500,000 | $2,250,000 |
Outside of the two main guys on either team, the rest of the match-day squad is only a touch over 16% higher, and the available wages are close enough that prudent signings can hope to bridge a resource gap.
It also means that the ‘advantage’ of the marquee spot is essentially confined to that one position. If you sign Kosta for $700k but he puts in the performances of a $300k player, then there is no cap advantage whatsoever compared to the other team that just signed a $300k player. So the only way of actually enforcing your resource advantage is to consistently make high-quality signings.
It would enable us to expand the number of available slots (more cap flexibility to hopefully reduce churn, make it easier to bring players back to ‘their’ team when an OS stint ends etc.) without prohibitively breaking competitiveness with less resourced teams. You could also plausibly not have a cap on ‘Designated’ spots, because the trade-offs of having a top-heavy team in a salary cap (particularly when there are pretty aggressive - at ~60k - minimum wages, and a squad of at least 20-23 to fill) are a natural constraint.
Not far off!!!
Great post @denmil.
Understanding this type of per squad position spend also underscores the importance of academy players. Up to 4 U23 players that have come through the academy are cap exempt with no limit on how much you pay them*. Add two marquees/designated players that means you only have to spread your cap over the remaining 14 players for a 20 man squad. If you trust your scholarship boys coming through to provide depth you can run a leaner 18 man squad and have $2.5m spread over 12 players. Massive advantage over a team paying $2.25m to 20 players.
*Interesting that we haven’t seen clubs use this to front load top U23 players to longer term contracts. Big money at 23, min-wage 24/25, ‘real’ value at 26.
Yeah as per the posts above if were doubling the marquees but not having any system to help the lower clubs then it really is just turning us into a farmers league and can join the likes of the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and SPL.
Also if theres no floor on the salary for these marquees its just going to encourage more of the bigger sides to pick off the best of the smaller teams and we might see Hemed, Urena etc follow Davilla into swapping a smaller team for a bigger one on a marquee contract (and also transfer fees but thats a whole extra issue)
Right now you can have 4 marquees outside the cap, 4 U23 and loyalty bonuses that really make the cap a cap in name only.
The thing is, that only applies to the organized teams. The teams that have invested in youth and haven’t cleared out every year get allowances, the ones who get rid of the entire team year by year get screwed over. If you look, Grant is essentially outside the cap and during our period of domination, we had 3-4 players that had only 15% of their salaries within the cap.
Very wide ranging interview with Danny T here:
“Okay, it’s not the Premier League or as technical a La Liga but you know what … it’s our football and we should be really proud of it.”
That’s what I say to people all the time. It’s our league, played in our time zone and you can actually go to games and experience the energy of a crowd rather than watching a mini on a Sunday morning in your lounge room.
Of course that only applies if you have the extra money to give to these players we’ve developed and kept on. It’s a way of extending the cap, and if you’re one of the big clubs, you’re looking for that, if you’re not, these advantages don’t apply to you because you don’t have this extra money to supplement the low in-cap sum with.
Nice post.
This wouldn’t change the maths for the “poor club” due to the floor, but do marquees still need to be FA-approved, or can you just exclude your two top earners from the cap? Or was that only if you wanted F(F)A money to help fund them?
marquees never required approval. Your top two earners are automatically classified as being outside of the cap as far as I understand. Approval was required for that “guest” marquee deal that was part funded by the FFA
100% true. The biggest issue is the inability of clubs to pay transfer fees. Understanding that it’s to prevent the richer clubs buying everyone up, but all that it’s done, is the smaller clubs developing youth are letting players out early, the moment they want to move, or they’re signing shorter contracts. If you get a decent youth prospect on a 5 year contract, then you can sell them on, make a bit of money and then invest in more players.