September 29 2002

Simon Jordan has revealed that he wishes to cut the wage bill at Palace by £97,000, to stop the club losing money every week.

In a recent meeting of chairmen and chief executives of First Division clubs only three out of 24 clubs could say that they could guarantee fulfilling their fixtures for this season.

Palace were one of the other 21 that couldn't.

With the plight of ITV digital, First division clubs have found themselves paying their players far too much, and are losing money rapidly.

With the introduction of transfer windows, this problem has been increased further as clubs won't easily be able to offload their high earning players.

The three clubs that said that they could fullfill their fixtures were Wolverhampton Wanderers, Portsmouth and Norwich City.

Graham Simpson, Watford's new chairman said: "Survival rather than promotion is now the number one priority for all but a handful of clubs in the First Division. Life will never be the same again.

"We have led the way by going public about our situation and doing something about it, but there are a lot of other clubs in the same boat."

Tim Shaw, Watford's chief executive, added: "It is not just the headline loss of £4.3 million per year from ITV Digital, but the decimation of the transfer market and the loss of faith from banks and other investors.

"We've had informal conversations with five or six clubs in our position and the PFA have met with around 10 in significant financial difficulties."

Simon Jordan added: "I believe that seven or eight clubs will be going into administration by the end of the season, if not before.

"The only ones who will not have to will be those who can have a rights issue, like Watford, or those with genuine benefactors.

"My personal cash call from Palace is £4.5 million of my own money this year, on top of the £27 million I've already spent.

"If it wasn't for my money, Palace would have to go into administration and then into liquidation.

"The problem is simple - we have all been paying players too much. The average wage bill among Palace's players is £297,000 per year and I have to get that down to around £200,000 - which is still a very good salary in this division - if we are to stop losing money.

"I've looked into this very carefully and we have offloaded some of our highest earners and replaced them with players on lower wages.

"Bit by bit the mentality of play ers is changing and they are beginning to realise that they can't ask for such enormous salaries any more."

Watford's Tim Shaw added: "The players we brought in this summer have all come in on lower wages than we would have expected before and they are getting that message through to the others.

"But there are still a lot of problems. The transfer window system doesn't help and we'd like it scrapped, and the parachute payment for clubs relegated from the Premier League is now effectively halved from 50 per cent to 25 per cent, which is a huge difference."

A salary cap has been suggested, but Jordan said that it would be unworkable.

"If you capped individual or squad wages, there would be no need for any club to lose money, but we haven't got the leadership or structure in place to administer it.

"We need a restructuring of the league so that the First Division is run by 24 club chairmen, not all 72 in the League.

"The Premier League works because they've got 20 chairmen who all meet and agree on how to run their own division, and that is how it should be right down to Division Three."