The gap between Leagues 1 and 2

I spoke to someone who's in-the-know at Lincoln, and the figures he told me were staggering.  Pretty much reiterated what we've speculated over the last couple of seasons.

Firstly, no wonder they won League 2 - they had a budget of £1m bigger than the next team.

Secondly, the rumours of paying players £5K per week in League 1 are not rumours at all.  £5K for this guy, £3.5K for Lee Frecklington, the list goes on.

I was told that Lincoln's budget in League 1 is £4.5m - that's £2m more than the proposed cap!!  How does that work?  As Aldi has mentioned, maybe the cap is actually unworkable anyway, and things will not change.  He also said that a £4.5m budget if definitely a lower-half budget up there.......

Either way, could we possibly even compete if we went up?  I think the only way to progress is to take the cups seriously, get a bit of luck here and there, invest to the absolute possible limit, and entice as many people in the ground as possible, otherwise League 2 is the highest we'll go.

We all knew football was daft, but this all really drove it home to me.

Quoted from Heisenberg

I spoke to someone who's in-the-know at Lincoln, and the figures he told me were staggering.  Pretty much reiterated what we've speculated over the last couple of seasons.

Firstly, no wonder they won League 2 - they had a budget of £1m bigger than the next team.

Secondly, the rumours of paying players £5K per week in League 1 are not rumours at all.  £5K for this guy, £3.5K for Lee Frecklington, the list goes on.

I was told that Lincoln's budget in League 1 is £4.5m - that's £2m more than the proposed cap!!  How does that work?  As Aldi has mentioned, maybe the cap is actually unworkable anyway, and things will not change.  He also said that a £4.5m budget if definitely a lower-half budget up there.......

Either way, could we possibly even compete if we went up?  I think the only way to progress is to take the cups seriously, get a bit of luck here and there, invest to the absolute possible limit, and entice as many people in the ground as possible, otherwise League 2 is the highest we'll go.

We all knew football was daft, but this all really drove it home to me.

if thats the case, then surely teams in LG1 would struggle to compete with teams in the championship, and a higher % of promoted teams relegated after their first season (with maybe the odd team doing well).  So its easy to see how Scunny are 10 mill in debt.

The salary cap is unworkable on so many levels.

I think the wider issue, especially in league 1 is the varying sizes of budgets. I’d imagine Lincoln’s is actually one of the smaller budgets. For clubs like lincoln who’ve had a sustained period of success the difficulty is ensuring you don’t lose the plot and fans remain sensible. You can see some Lincoln fans now, albeit, the new ones who don’t remember the first years in non league, wondering and questioning why they didn’t push on to get promoted again.

There are teams in the championship with top flight salary budgets. Whatever Lincoln et al do, they simply can’t and wouldn’t compete with that.

Lincoln earned the money and were progressive in positioning themselves firmly in the community and as part of the city’s identify. They capitalised on new fans and it helped get them to league 1. Deep down I’d imagine the club are happy with that and looking to sustain that position. They’ve invested in training facilities and are exploring further investment opportunities. I’d imagine they’ll end up with a new ground before us to.

Again, this reiterates why the salary cap isn’t the great idea it’s portrayed to be unless you’re a club like us who set their own salary cap which is clearly very low. Is it ok just to exist? Or should there still be some ambition and drive?

I’m still expecting the PFA to win their case against the introduction of the cap to be honest but time will tell.

As for Lincoln, aside from them never really being a rival, they along with teams like Wycombe etc have become and should become a model for clubs like us. Sadly, and I’m sure someone will come and say I’ve made it about bashing Fenty etc. but I don’t think we’re entirely arsed as a club. We were excited about a new portacabin, and it’s been made obvious that we will be airing on the side of caution and should have low expectations of the coming season rather than recognising a potentially good opportunity to progress. We failed to capitalise whe we got promoted and we tread water. There are similar clubs about like us and I’d imagine it’s frustrating for their fans too.

Is what’s happening at Lincoln or Wycombe or even places like Burton sustainable? Who knows but it’s extremely rare that a club ever goes bust...and when they do it’s for more than just having high wage bill.

I guess for Lincoln, similar to say Man City and so on, people know you have cash so they inflate their asking price. I do know Cowley did ask the club to stop talking to the echo about how much the cup run made etc because average players were asking for more money than they’re worth knowing Lincoln had it and probably wanted them...

Quoted from Heisenberg

I spoke to someone who's in-the-know at Lincoln, and the figures he told me were staggering.  Pretty much reiterated what we've speculated over the last couple of seasons.

Firstly, no wonder they won League 2 - they had a budget of £1m bigger than the next team.

Secondly, the rumours of paying players £5K per week in League 1 are not rumours at all.  £5K for this guy, £3.5K for Lee Frecklington, the list goes on.

I was told that Lincoln's budget in League 1 is £4.5m - that's £2m more than the proposed cap!!  How does that work?  As Aldi has mentioned, maybe the cap is actually unworkable anyway, and things will not change.  He also said that a £4.5m budget if definitely a lower-half budget up there.......

Either way, could we possibly even compete if we went up?  I think the only way to progress is to take the cups seriously, get a bit of luck here and there, invest to the absolute possible limit, and entice as many people in the ground as possible, otherwise League 2 is the highest we'll go.

We all knew football was daft, but this all really drove it home to me.

It's got to the stage where if we get to league 1 (which I would think of as our natural level) we'd be aiming for 20th place and avoiding relegation as a decent season. The wages scunny were paying were eye watering (and blatantly unsustainable for a club of their size) and they still went down.

I would be looking at fleetwood, wycombe, burton  gillingham, Bristol rovers etc as smaller clubs who do more than just survive in league 1