butt monkey posted:
But why does the Cap figure keep going down? No account of inflation or anything else, just a blind obsession to lower the Salary Cap amount each year. Hang the repercussions.
The first rate of the cap in 2004 was £1.8m. Wigan had a dispensation to pay £2.3m for one season.
It then went down to £1.7m in 2005 and it was said the reason for this was the introduction of a link to inflation. So they set it down to a lower figure on the expectation it would then rise year on year. Why they had to do that I don't know.
They then set it £1.75m for 2006 - which was the inflation increase.
This year it went down to £1.6m because the 2006 figure included employers national insurance contributions and these were removed from the cap. As the effect of removing this from the cap was equal to £150K it means the cap effectively remained at the same level.
However you will have no doubt spotted that if the £1.6m this year is effectively the same as last years £1.75m then the inflation increase was not applied.
That is indeed the case and the reason given for this was "The inflationary increase has been waived in favour of excluding Junior/Academy players from the Cap."
Taking a portion of junior players wages out of the cap (£3K per player this season) is a step in the right direction but why does that mean the inflation increase need not be applied? They are totally unrelated as far as I can see.
Next year it will actually go up to £1.65m as the inflation increase is due to be applied.
What you can see from the above is whenever steps have been taken to loosen the cap there has always been another compensating change such as forging the inflation increase. These are IMO fine examples of the tail wagging the dog as I am sure they are a sop to less well off clubs who would bleat at any relaxation of the cap. None of them should ever have been agreed to.
Dave