Notts County High Wages Leads to Promotion

Guardian

Notts County chairman says promotion from League Two achieved fairly Tweet this (7)Guardian report

Paul Doyle at Meadow Lane The Guardian, Monday 19 April 2010

Notts County demand to be congratulated, not castigated. This victory secured promotion for a club who, according to their rivals, have benefited from breaking the rules. However, the County chairman, Ray Trew, says that to see his club's success as the result of cheating is to indulge in sour grapes.

The oldest club in the league have been one of the least popular since details of their extraordinary financial contortions emerged this season. After being taken over last summer by a company called Munto Finance, County hired Sven-Goran Eriksson as director of football and lavished extravagant contracts on players, most famously a £40,000-per-week deal for Sol Campbell.

Envy turned to outrage when it transpired that Munto Finance did not have the money necessary for such deals and the club were, therefore, guilty of shattering the League Two salary cap, under which expenditure on wages must not exceed 60% of revenue. A transfer embargo was imposed but other clubs are angry that, though Campbell has left, the likes of Kasper Schmeichel, the goalkeeper who is earning £15,000 per week, have been allowed to remain. County, claim the critics, have not been effectively punished.

Trew denies this. In an open letter to League Two chairmen , he explains that since saving the club from extinction in February he has injected enough funds to allow County to comply with the salary cap, claiming the wage bill now stands at 54.9% of total income.

"Such a dramatic shift from being outside Football League rules to being comfortably within them, without the need for placing the club into administration, represents the ideal way for a club in similar circumstances to handle our predicament within the current rules," Trew tells his fellow chairmen.

"In spite of the well-documented troubles that we have had to contend with at the club and even with the restriction of a transfer embargo, the maximum sentence agreed upon by the Football League's member clubs for exceeding the salary cap, being in place, we have still managed to maintain a fantastic run of form on the pitch which has seen us climb to the top of the League."

Trew is under no illusion that his letter will extinguish the complaints, especially if County beat second-placed Rochdale tomorrow and take a step closer to the title. "I'm sure if we're crowned champions there'll be some clubs still bleating, but with no justification," he says. County's future looked bleak when he took over but he says it is now bright. "When we came in the debt was £7.3m, now it is well below £4m and I envisage that by the end of this year we will be debt free," he said.

Success on the pitch has not, he claims, alleviated the financial pressure. "Quite the contrary," he said. "Not going up would have been much less of a financial burden because our promotion bonuses are quite substantial." Nevertheless, he said County will give transfer funds this summer to their manager, Steve Cotterill, who has taken 11 wins and two draws from 13 games since arriving on a short-term deal in February. "He has identified six positions he wants to strengthen and we'll be doing our best to help him," Trew said, which rather suggests that Cotterill, whose contract expires in the summer, is planning to stay at the club even though he has so far refused to commit.

Munto Finance kicked off this season claiming County would be in the Premier League within five years. Trew said: "Our target is the Championship."

Man of the match Lee Hughes (Notts County)
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/apr/19/notts-county-morecambe-league-two