Celtic could afford to pay a marquee signing in the region of £100,000-a-week if they wanted to, according to finance expert Adam Williams.
Kieran Tierney is the highest earner at Celtic right now on £50,000-a-week, and in order to attract bigger names to Parkhead, they may have to offer salaries in that ballpark more often.
Dermot Desmond has plenty of cash in the bank which could allow the Hoops to stretch the wage budget into uncharted territory.
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How Celtic could pay a statement signing £100,000-a-week
Williams told 67 Hail Hail that Celtic could hand a top signing a wage of £100,000-a-week, but the chances of that would be very unlikely as that wouldn’t be sustainable in the long run.
He said: “First off, Celtic’s wage bill will move up and down depending on how successful or otherwise they are from season to season.
“In terms of the base wage structure, that tends to rise season after season because of football’s macroeconomics and general inflation.”
Celtic’s wage bill depends on the European competition they qualify for
“But how much it rises depends on whether Celtic get into the Champions League or Europa League, as well as the changes they make to their squad.
“If they are in Europe’s top competition, players are paid more. And the further into competition you go, the more you pay out in appearance fees and other performance-related bonuses. In the Europa League, those bonuses are lower. The same principle applies domestically depending on what silverware, if any, they win in a given season.
“Last season, when they were in the Champions League, they spent £75m on wages. Compare that to the last time they were in the Europa League – the payroll was £59m. When you look at their transfer business as well as the fact that they were in the Europa League for the first time in four seasons this term, I’d predict that the wage bill will have fallen for the first time in five years this season.
“So let’s say the payroll is £70m. Not all of that is players. Maybe 20-30 per cent of that figure is the wider staff. Let’s call it 25 per cent. That means they are spending £52.5m on player wages.
“It gets complicated when you look at players out on loan, as well as players who have joined on loan. You don’t know what percentage of the player’s wages Celtic or the club they are joining are paying. But let’s say there are 35 players on the first-team payroll. That works out as an average of £1.5m per player, per year. That’s about £29,000 per week as an average, but you’ve also got National Insurance, pensions and other related costs. We can call that 20 per cent. So the average works out at around £23,000 per week. That’s the mean, though. Some players will earn much less, some much more.
Celtic’s wage budget has almost doubled since Robbie Keane move
“At the top end, for someone like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, I think you’re probably looking at £60,000 per week. At the bottom, it will be just a few thousand. Also, remember that figure these figures won’t be a fixed figure every week – as much as 50 per cent can be variable pay, based on performance, image rights and so on.
“These are back-of-an-envelope calculations, so give me some rope here. There is definitely some margin for error, but these figures won’t be too far out. And just as a point of order: you can’t trust the wage aggregation sites that show up at the top on a Google search; they are invariably absolutely miles out on this stuff.
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“But using the very rough figures we’ve worked out, I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that, for a real statement, marquee signing, Celtic could pay up to £100,000 per week. Robbie Keane was on £65,000-a-week 15 years ago, and Celtic’s total wage bill has almost doubled since then.
“However, ‘could’ and ‘should’ are two very different words. If you take it to its logical extreme, Celtic have got £67m cash in the bank, so they ‘could’ pay a new signing £1m per week, but that would be insane. After all, just because you have a credit card, doesn’t mean you should max it out.”
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