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Should the a league continue with the salary cap?

Should the a league continue with the salary cap?

  • Total voters
    18
HappyGuus said:
Not saying I disagree. But it's one thing to remove or increase the cap, it's another for any Oz club to actually afford to pay more. All seems a bit pointless at the moment as they're broke.

The league as a whole is probably only averaging one marquee in recent seasons when they've allowed for 26. Until the clubs actually have money AND want to spend it, the cap is practically ineffectual. Losing our better players to overseas is a fact of life right now, we can't afford to keep them here.
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Sydney, WSW, Victory and City more than capable of spending more. Perth/Sage were willing to spend when they went over the cap and got caught :ROFLMAO:.

Getting rid of the cap may entice clubs to take the ACL seriously which means higher quality of imports/players coming to our shores.

Id be more concerned about the CCM's and Brisbane (in there current states) etc they would get left behind.
 
biggiemic said:
Sydney, WSW, Victory and City more than capable of spending more.
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If they are capable then they aren't bothering to spend it. Just two marquees out of eight between them. That's my point I suppose, even the rich clubs aren't bothering to spend on players so what's the point having or dismissing the cap? Today it seems to have little to no effect.

Let's say we ditch the cap, will clubs change their tune and suddenly want to spend more? Let's say they do, then maybe that would help retain more quality players. But then this would effect transfer revenue, keeping those players instead of selling them. So we have clubs spending more and earning less. Then there will also be less room for youth, both in the squad and in senior match minutes, exacerbating the problem.

That only came to mind as I was typing it haha. But I can't say that I'm sold on ditching the cap based on that. But lower the cap floor, yes, this would put less strain on smaller clubs and close the gap with the second tier. I think 😅
 
HappyGuus said:
If they are capable then they aren't bothering to spend it. Just two marquees out of eight between them. That's my point I suppose, even the rich clubs aren't bothering to spend on players so what's the point having or dismissing the cap? Today it seems to have little to no effect.
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It's not that they aren't bothered, it's more about why would they spend more. Just because an owner is wealthy, doesn't mean the club is. These are businesses like any other and have budgets like any other. I remember back in the Arnie era of SFC, he said they had a combined marquee budget of $1.5m. Not a lot for two players. It would be a similar story at the other 'big' clubs. Sure we've seen some spending above that, but that's only in special circumstances and the FA/APL have partially funded those signings. There is simply no ROI. No prize money. No risk of relegation. Unless you progress pretty far in the ACL, it's a financial loss. Doesn't leave much incentive.

For me, I don't like the cap in it's current format. I'm not completely against a cap, I just think the one we have should be changed and simplified.
I'd much prefer a hard cap with zero exemptions. No marquees. No loyalty exemptions. Just a single figure.
Current grant money is $530k.
Current salary cap is $2.6m. I say double it to $5.2m. Remove all exemptions.
Current floor is $2.25m. I say lower it to around $1.5m. There is a minimum wage set in the CBA, so that is already effectively a salary floor. If an entire squad was on minimum wage, it would total approx $1.2m.

Then clubs would have way more options on how they build a squad. If a club wanted to drop $3.5m on a single player and then $1.5m on the rest of the squad, so be it. If a club wanted to spend $200k on every player, they could do that also.
 
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someguyjc said:
It's not that they aren't bothered, it's more about why would they spend more. Just because an owner is wealthy, doesn't mean the club is. These are businesses like any other and have budgets like any other. I remember back in the Arnie era of SFC, he said they had a combined marquee budget of $1.5m. Not a lot for two players. It would be a similar story at the other 'big' clubs. Sure we've seen some spending above that, but that's only in special circumstances and the FA/APL have partially funded those signings. There is simply no ROI. No prize money. No risk of relegation. Unless you progress pretty far in the ACL, it's a financial loss. Doesn't leave much incentive.

For me, I don't like the cap in it's current format. I'm not completely against a cap, I just think the one we have should be changed and simplified.
I'd much prefer a hard cap with zero exemptions. No marquees. No loyalty exemptions. Just a single figure.
Current grant money is $530k.
Current salary cap is $2.6m. I say double it to $5.2m. Remove all exemptions.
Current floor is $2.25m. I say lower it to around $1.5m. There is a minimum wage set in the CBA, so that is already effectively a salary floor. If an entire squad was on minimum wage, it would total approx $1.2m.

Then clubs would have way more options on how they build a squad. If a club wanted to drop $3.5m on a single player and then $1.5m on the rest of the squad, so be it. If a club wanted to spend $200k on every player, they could do that also.
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exactly right....
 
someguyjc said:
It's not that they aren't bothered, it's more about why would they spend more. Just because an owner is wealthy, doesn't mean the club is. These are businesses like any other and have budgets like any other. There is simply no ROI. No prize money. No risk of relegation. Unless you progress pretty far in the ACL, it's a financial loss. Doesn't leave much incentive.
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That's exactly my point just in different words 😅 The rich clubs aren't bothering to spend on players because it's poor financial sense.
 
The whole "rich clubs will always win" thing also is a bit interesting when you start digging around at the numbers.
It would have been about 10 years ago, I was shown a spreadsheet of salary dollars spent vs competition points earned in the A-League. I'm pretty sure this data was confidential, so not gonna name names, but let's say the source was someone who may or may not have been at the PFA at the time.
The "richer" clubs definitely had accumulated more total competition points, it was clear as day. However when you looked at the bottom of the table you had the Mariners. Their spend was basically the bare minimum, however their cost per point was significantly lower. From memory it was less than half that of the top clubs. At the time they had a championship and two premiership trophies, so it wasn't as if they were without success. Since then they have also picked up some more trophies, and although I don't know their recent salary figures, it would be safe to assume they would still be near (if not at) the bottom of that spending table. Based on A-league trophies, the Mariners are currently third with 3 of each. That is only one championship behind Victory.
 
biggiemic said:
Sydney, WSW, Victory and City more than capable of spending more. Perth/Sage were willing to spend when they went over the cap and got caught :ROFLMAO:.

Getting rid of the cap may entice clubs to take the ACL seriously which means higher quality of imports/players coming to our shores.

Id be more concerned about the CCM's and Brisbane (in there current states) etc they would get left behind.
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Like someone else has mentioned, the CCMs are the third most successful team in the A-League era, and sixth in the national league era.

A club the lives within its means.
 
A better TV deal means more money can be spent on ALM clubs making removing the cap redundant. If clubs received around $4-5m a season better players can be brought in.
 
HappyGuus said:
The rich clubs aren't bothering to spend on players because it's poor financial sense.
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Where's the ROI? You spend money to get money back from the 'marquee' players. Sydney for example spent money on ADP and now Costa because they've both got name recognition and can be used for promotion. In this case they've done quite well on both. The rest of the team isn't on that much relatively because there isn't much ROI for the rest of them. Australian football really is small beer in the Australian sporting landscape, not that it doesn't have or has affected the quality of it overall but for the sheer fact that the biggest piece of the total spending of the sporting pie doesn't go to football.

Get rid the cap, it's pointless and won't change the overall spend of the clubs that much even taking into account the deluded fools from the PFA or greedy agents.
 
erogenouszone said:
Where's the ROI? You spend money to get money back from the 'marquee' players. Sydney for example spent money on ADP and now Costa because they've both got name recognition and can be used for promotion. In this case they've done quite well on both. The rest of the team isn't on that much relatively because there isn't much ROI for the rest of them. Australian football really is small beer in the Australian sporting landscape, not that it doesn't have or has affected the quality of it overall but for the sheer fact that the biggest piece of the total spending of the sporting pie doesn't go to football.

Get rid the cap, it's pointless and won't change the overall spend of the clubs that much even taking into account the deluded fools from the PFA or greedy agents.
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Any evidence on the overall expenditure by the clubs? I seem to recall that pre-2000 there were quite a few clubs that went buts by bringing in big name players without any ROI. Indeed I seem to recall that Leeds United went bust for the same reason. And if clubs go bust it does not augur well for the competition.
 
Sutherlandbear said:
Like someone else has mentioned, the CCMs are the third most successful team in the A-League era, and sixth in the national league era.

A club the lives within its means.
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Yeah, in a salary capped leagued.

Remove the cap, and they could potentially be in big trouble.
 
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