OPINION
Leeds CEO Angus Kinnear has said that player salaries at Leeds have grown significantly under Andrea Radrizzani’s reign and that the club used to have the wage bill of a “mid-table team”.
Talking to the BBC, Kinnear said that fans needed to understand that some of the money from player sales had to go back to sustaining the club’s increasing expenses, and revealed that Leeds were “very close” to securing Kalvin Phillips on a new long-term deal.
“The biggest thing to understand is how much the wage bill has grown under Andrea’s tenure,” Kinnear said.
“The wage bill we had when he took over was a wage bill for a mid-table team and there’s a correlation between how much you spend on wages and where you finish in the league.
“That’s the reason, one of the reasons, Leeds were consistently finishing in mid-table.
“The players that we’ve signed and the players we’ve renewed, who we believe are top drawer Championship players, the type that can get us promoted, are more expensive so that wage bill has grown significantly.
“When we’re trying to manage the club, some of the players’ sale money goes into supporting that wage bill and ensuring we can maintain the integrity of the squad.”
Increasing salaries
Marcelo Bielsa turned a squad of misfits that finished 13th in the Championship in the 17/18 season into real promotion contenders.
Kalvin Phillips is arguably the player who has benefited the most from Bielsa and he’s been transformed from a solid squad player into someone who’s been linked with Premier League clubs and touted as a possible future England star.
Kinnear said Leeds were “very close” to signing Phillips up on a new long-term deal, but with strong interest in him from Aston Villa, among others, over the summer, a new deal won’t be cheap.
According to Football Insider, Phillips is holding out for £40k-a-week, a salary that would propel him into the upper echelons of the Leeds pay bracket, alongside Kiko Casilla and Patrick Bamford. A Championship club would find it very hard to sustain many players on that sort of salary.
According to Financial Football News, Leeds recorded an increase in their wage bill from £20.7m to £31.4m in their latest financial results and said, “The extra wages equalled a sizeable extra £206k a week, a large sum for any Championship club.”
However, Kinnear is right when he says that any team serious about promotion has to spend money to get it. Aston Villa relied on expensive Premier League loans such as Tammy Abraham last season, but the gamble paid off.
It’s refreshing to hear that Leeds are trying to push things without being reckless.