City and Chelsea have total wage bills around £50m pa more than ours.
That's £2.5m pa for 20 players or (estimating, not really real) another £50k/w for each of those players. We can't close that gap with efficiency measures alone, and we can't spend that much.
I don't mention United because they have some mystical Fergie power to achieve success with a pretty patchy and unevenly remunerated squad. Perhaps we can emulate that, I don't know. Doesn't seem so.
Our big problem in recent seasons has been player retention. We've let some of the best players around leave—partly for want of spending on their wages—and I think we'll struggle to replace them without big spending because we're not really a drawcard.
The more we soft-pedal on wages the more retention, and hence transfer spending, becomes a problem.
