The highest players annual wage bill in the championship falls to Watford and the lowest it won’t surprise you is at Rotherham United. We have researched the championship wage structure and obtained information based on what certain players are on ( gross ) with filed contracts via their agents, the football league and FA, dialogue with friends of the website and for basic contract details - via open source.
Some people will say that a players salary is difficult to source. That generally comes from people who don’t know where to look, contact or go about finding transparent information. If you just Google a players name and ask for his salary then some of it will be okay, but in a lot of cases incorrect, and definitely not precise. That’s why certain folk state it’s never accurate, because it rarely is.
All players contracts have to be signed off and are kept by the Football Association ( FA ) This is a stipulation throughout the pyramid structure. All the clauses and additional information are open to the FA and this includes all bonuses, additional payments for promotion or goal scoring and includes sell on data for future transactions. All footballers are employees of their clubs. All Premier League and English Football League players are issued with a standard form employment agreement. When a footballer or an aspiring footballer is offered a professional contract with a club, the footballer's agent will normally negotiate only a few key clauses with the club, including the clauses relating to the player's salary and bonus and the duration of the contract. Most of the other provisions are standardised and are included in the employment agreements of all of the club's professional footballers.
That’s the basics and through disclosure access certain information can be obtained, the best way is to obtain your information through the players agency, representatives, family or the player themselves. There are other ways, but of course access and source protection is crucial. You can of course shout from the roof tops an excellent news story, and include where you got the information from. But that will be your only transaction with that source. And nobody else will want to do business with you.
Swansea City sit around mid table on salary outlay which is just about twelve million pounds a year. Olivier Ntcham is the highest paid player who was negotiated via Mark Allen when he was in role in player recruitment at the club. Ntcham can boast a salary of £26,000 a week gross, more or less. Part of Ntcham’s signing on fee is tied up in his salary. A player like Andy Fisher signed a 2.2 million pounds contract last January which expires in 2026, so the length here is important. That places him on around £9,500 a week at Swansea. It can fluctuate slightly.
If we look across the coast at Cardiff City their ‘registered ‘ highest paid player is Joe Ralls, how their recent transactions of late impact on that isn’t known, but they surely can’t equal Ralls £23,000 a week salary. Cardiff City have a yearly wage outlay in the region of fourteen million pounds. The top five big spenders in the championship probably won’t surprise you. In fifth are Sheffield United with an annual wage bill of eighteen million, Cirian Clark is a loan player from Newcastle United and the Blades are paying his full £34,000 a week salary. in fourth are West Bromwich Albion who spend twenty three million pounds a year, Jake Livermore enjoys £43,000 a week. In third we see Norwich City on twenty four million paying Ben Gibson around £38,000 a week. In second are Burnley, they spend twenty seven million pounds a year, and surprisingly Josh Brownhill is their biggest earner on £41,000 a week. Watford top the big spenders charts with a twenty nine million pounds wage bill, and now please take a seat, although it’s not Andre Ayew territory, Ismaïla Sarr takes home £60,000 a week. The issue with Watford is they have other players very close to that. And could well be getting rid of Slaven Bilic very soon at a huge cost. They will then be looking for their third manager of the season.
That should tell anyone shouting for Russell Martin to go the reality of the financials to do so.
A little bit more information on the Swans.
Captain Matt Grimes has often come under scrutiny as a result of his salary. The truth is he is on £12,800 a week and his contract ends in 2025. Ryan Manning is another player of interest. Destined to leave the Swans at the end of this season by all accounts he earns £9,500 a week and is expecting nearly twice that if he moves to another club. That may well include his signing on fee incorporated in to his salary, and that’s the sticking point really for Ryan and Swansea. He will be looking for a quarter of a million pounds ( plus ) if he signs a new Swans deal as a signing on fee. Swansea won’t meet that, as much as they wouldn’t meet with Chiedozie Ogbene’s transfer fee. Ryan, we are told, will want £14,000 a week. He knows his worth so he will surely leave to find that ?
Either way there are players like Ben Cabango who is on a salary far lower than anyone could even guess it’s absurd by todays standards. We have been asked not to disclose it in this article. However, it isn’t a capology rating. So, that’s that, the money in the championship is massive, but players contracts so go from £1,000 a week to £40,000 plus a week in possibly the craziest league in the world. Not only for results, but of course for money.