Bad Bob wrote:john craig wrote:stmichael wrote:It is funny but I get the feeling every big club is waiting for Chelsea to end their buying for the summer before they pursue their targets.
I don't think it's so much that as the fact that Chelsea can simply afford to buy players at the start of the summer. If you think about it, it is unusual for top clubs to go out and make all their buys at the start of the summer and the reason for this is wages. Especially for the top clubs who are going to be buying top players on pretty high wages, it simply doesn't make financial sense to be paying them for an extra 2 months when they are either on holiday or world cup duty. Of course this doesn't matter to Chelsea though - five signings already spending over 50 million and two of those - Shevchenko and Ballack are on over a hundred grand a week. By my calculations Chelsea will have paid a total of over 2 million in wages to these 2 guys alone before they've even kicked a ball for them. Crazy or what?
But I thought that new players cannot register with their new clubs until July 1st? If that's the case wouldn't wages only start being paid after July 1st irrespective of when a player signed the contract?
I don't think the real world of football is the same as in Football Manager/Championship Manager where every contract ends on 30th June and new ones begin on July 1st. Maybe someone who knows more than me can clarify this, but surely contracts don't run on until July - what's the point in that when the season finishes in May? Clubs surely aren't going to sign players up for an extra month beyond the end of the season and pay them for being on holiday... I'm sure different clubs have different policies and it's not as simple as every contract ending on June 30th. Have to stress though that I'm no expert on this and as for the registration of players with their new clubs, I don't know anything about this being July 1st - surely Ballack is now registered with Chelsea or he wouldn't be paraded around wearing their strip, and it's nowhere near July 1st yet?