As a £ figure yes but as a % no
Wages are going up so that would inevitably mean that the overall wage bill in £ would be at its highest but as a % they have been steadily decreasing it in their time
Our highest % was actually 1999/00 when it was around the 90% mark
But in recent times 10/11 was a peak of around 70% they reduced that to 64% in 12/13 and now around 56%
In that time 10/11 turnover was around £185m and now it's around £300m
Both figures are equally viable though, although as a percentage of turnover only adds some confusion IMO
It certainly gives us 2 ways of looking at it, and let's be honest here, the wage bill back then certainly needed trimming, especially looked at as a percentage of turnover.
In the 50% range seems to be the magic figure that most football analysts/economists agree on, and this is backed up pretty well in the excellent book
"Soccernomics" as is Klopps philosophy of doing more on the training field.
So the myth that FSG are reducing the wage bill is untrue unless you look at it as a reduction in terms of percentage of turnover, which seems a convoluted way of making a simple stat seem like something else, otherwise, our wage bill has gone up
as I stated
, because our average pay has actually gone up.
Different arguments can be made depending on how you look at it, as ever.
Edit to add, I just saw your other post, and I think you're absolutely right that we can (easily) afford to bring in players and not have it affect us adversely.
However, we are also due to negotiate some new contracts starting with Coutinho, who appears to be underpaid compared to others in the squad at around £75k, so perhaps that should be considered as well.
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