Wolves Banter

22 Jul 2026 11:43:14
Flea - creating a new post rather than reply to a thread that is at the very bottom of the page so doubt if many will read it.

We were discussing non-football wages from the latest accounts which are somewhere in the region of £60m+, (excluding NI), when scaled back to 12 months. This assumes £71m, again excluding NI, for the 12 months for the squad which is probably at the higher end for most public estimates.

You correctly identified that Nathan will earn more than the average non football wage which works out at roughly 172k pa excluding NI but his circa 625k pa, excluding NI - the highest paid director according to the accounts barely moves the dial.
Even if you assume the manager and his assistants pull in £10m pa excluding NI, which is highly unlikely to put it mildly, this only moves the dial slightly and you are still talking about somewhere in the region of £143k excluding employers NI.


Maybe an accountant or two and doctor might get there but in reality the vast vast majority of the rest - groundsmen, cleaners, catering and retail staff, ticket desk, office staff etc will earn nothing like that or even a third of that.

Maybe it is payoff to previous managers or agents fees although again these would have to be enormous to make any of this make sense.
Also if they are included in wages what makes up the 40m of other costs - excluding interest - the club incurs. A high utilities bill, rates, postage stamps and policing etc etc?

I did see a poster on another site claiming that the apprentices were all on monster salaries, multiples of the money City and Chelsea were paying, but I don't believe the moon is made of cheese or that the earth is flat either.

22 Jul 2026 14:18:44
Apologies, Nathan earns nearer 680k - still a non issue of course.

22 Jul 2026 10:45:48
Wolves could be in trouble over the Tolu Arokodare situation. Under new Fifa rules you can't isolate a player or put him in a bomb squad. Or have him training with the under 21s. And you can not bar him from training you have to intergrate him back into the squad.

If you don't the player can apply for his contract to be ripped up and sue the club for the remaining wages of his contract. If i have any details
Wrong i hope Ed00s'1 could put things right.

{Ed001's Note - they would be able to counter with any issues of behaviour, which could constitute breach of contract by the player. I think it will end up with the contract just being ripped up.}

22 Jul 2026 13:05:48
So Wolves get nothing for him.

22 Jul 2026 13:29:32
HandsomeLad, that's the way FIFA have it now with the new rules: either rip his contract up or he can go to FIFA and say this and that. Wolves then have to counter what he says, and hope they win, or he rips his contract up and sues for wages for the remainder of his contract.

22 Jul 2026 12:21:52
Ed001's thank you for that but that doesn't help Wolves with this situation.

22 Jul 2026 05:35:15
Wolves training was cancelled yesterday following Tolu Arokodare’s refusal to leave the pitch when asked not to train with squad.

Extra security enforced today at Compton Park to make sure he was not at training ground.
What's happening with the team man?

22 Jul 2026 06:19:15
Not the team.Tolu is not a good person to have around, he's obviously toxic and Cesar wants him gone.

22 Jul 2026 07:55:51
Fine him and ban him from the ground and Compton, he is a disgrace.

22 Jul 2026 10:10:10
Jesus, this guy is just so toxic! I was reading online that the one caveat Edwards had this window was that he refused to have him in the team after the Mane bust up. It really does sum up the window we had this time last year, and, as TFG shows below, the years leading up to it.

We paid an insane £23m for Tolu. Remember how all last year Jeff was telling us that it's about the personality as much as the player?! What an absolute crock of s***! As always, thanks for nothing, Jeff. 🤮

22 Jul 2026 12:49:45
He was probably told by his agent to go to training, because it is in his best interest to be there.
A one-off scuffle is nothing to be all upset about - there must be more to it.

21 Jul 2026 20:19:22
Does anyone know in the 10 years Fosun have owned us the total money spent and brought in? Will be interesting to see, please.

22 Jul 2026 08:56:05
From Transfermarkt figures in EUR, since the summer of 2016, the club have spent EUR962.1m on incoming players and have sold players to a total of EUR748.3m.

Total loss on players over the 10 seasons is EUR214m.

22 Jul 2026 11:15:42
Nice1, good thanks for that... So, Fosun have spent money on us all, be it borrowed or loaned against the ground, etc.... The problem lies with how we spent it on rubbish, it seems to me.

22 Jul 2026 14:16:41
Note, whatever way it was spent, Euro 21m pa is a ludicrously low sum.
Imagine you are attempting to improve/extend your house, whilst, of course, maintaining it.
However, your income is seemingly nowhere near enough to do this, so the vast majority of your expenditure does not come from your income, but from selling off the fixtures and fittings from your house and strips of land from the garden.
In other words, the net expenditure is not even enough to maintain the house, let alone improve it.
Back to football, the squad inexorably gets older (and contracts run out), so you have to spend just to stand still.
The amount the accountants use for that is called depreciation.
Think of your car; you buy it for, say, 20k, and intend to run it into the ground and scrap it for, as good as, damn it, nothing, and then buy another car. An accountant would recognise that the car is worth less each year and would "charge" the difference called "depreciation".
In theory, you move that cash to one side, as if it was a real charge that had to be paid, and, at the end of the period, when the car is deemed to be worth nothing, you should have 20k put aside.
Theoretically, enough to buy another car - except, of course, for inflation!
Wolves have not been spending net anywhere near even the basic depreciation figure, which last year was circa 80m annualised, and this is despite the fact that the football depreciation figure is far too low anyway, as it only charges against the players acquired and charges nothing for home-grown players or players on second contracts.
Consequently, far from improving the squad/house, Wolves have basically gutted it, and it is now a wreck, unfit for habitation/Premier League football!

21 Jul 2026 14:36:24
Lankshear to Middlesborough 10mill with add ons could hit 20mill. No way are Wolve going to pay that. If im right Wolves signings over 20mill. Since Fuson took over Jiminez, Cuhna, Krejci, now im struggling if anyone knows others. I would like to know even in the PL Wolves didn't spend big not on players 20mill or over.

21 Jul 2026 17:13:13
Guedes, Semado, Fabio.

21 Jul 2026 17:14:04
Forgot. Cunha.

21 Jul 2026 19:13:34
To be honest, our sales worry me more than our purchases. So, West Ham have now made over £150m off just two players. Meanwhile, we couldn't even break the £40m mark for our best player. Anyone shouting about giving Fosun a chance needs to give their heads a wobble, cause it's just a different s*** doing the same s***. 🤮

21 Jul 2026 20:49:06
Fosun are an absolute joke. They accept what are clearly below value offers for our best players because everyone knows that we no longer have a good negotiator at the club. No doubt we'll go out and overpay for another waste of space player over the coming weeks.

21 Jul 2026 21:43:27
Tolu was over 20, wasn't he?

21 Jul 2026 23:13:03
BB and Good, you can have RAN, Neves, MGW and Gomes for less than the price of Summerville, a modest Prem player, and Fernandes, who - albeit to my v biased eyes - isn't a patch on any one of Gomes, MGW or Neves!
I don't understand it, but you have to ask why, for example, this summer Spurs or Man United didn't call Wolves.
As many have said, Wolves sell players - ok, sometimes poorly/far too quickly as in the case of RAN - into a market.
Although everyone knows that Wolves are a distressed seller, (and whilst that won't help get the best price), that surely should merely have increased the number of sharks circling?
In this case, if anyone had wanted to pay more for Gomes in a summer when a number of CMs were sold for massive fees, they had plenty of time to call Wolves.
However, if you are looking for the real problem, it is not the appalling transfer market record, although that is indeed appalling in virtually every aspect of it, but the massively out of control cost base. (if it isn't, as many vehemently claim, Fosun milking the company, what is it?)
As I have said many times before, if Wolves had not mind-blowingly underperformed Brentford, then over the last few years it wouldn't have had £150m more money to play with - like West Ham after their sales - and been able to keep Neves, Gomes, RAN and MGW, but hundreds of millions allowing them to keep those 4 plus Jota, Cunha, Neto, Collins, etc etc.


Of course, if Wolves, for whatever reason, and it surely was to cover the massive losses they started incurring once Jeff took control, hadn't started buying and selling players appallingly (and fallen out with Nuno or, for that matter, Lopetegui), then not only wouldn't they have needed to sell players, but those players wouldn't have wanted to leave a team* that may well have been playing European football most years!
* Without the unnecessary sales Wolves could line up: Sa, Semedo, Collins, Krejci, RAN, Neves, Gomes, MGW, Neto, JSL, Cunha, with subs such as Nunes, Emmanuel, Andre, etc, and tragically that doesn't even include Jota.

21 Jul 2026 09:45:38
Ten years today since the heady days of the Fosun takeover. After eight years in the top flight we are now back where Fosun found us. A not so happy anniversary.