Portman Road: Insight into players’ pay as club debts revealed

PLAYERS and other football-related staff including coaches and the manager cost the club an average of more than £250,000 each last season, including pay and other employment costs, figures contained in Ipswich Town’s annual report suggest.

The accounts show that, at the year-end last June, the club has 120 full-time employees, made up of 56 playing, training and football management staff and 64 administrative, commercial and stadium maintenance staff.

There were also 30 part-time employees, including five on the playing side and 25 within the other departments.

Wages and salaries totalled £15.960million, with the employment bill rising to £17.954m when social security and pension costs are added in.

Although the accounts contain no breakdown between the pay of football and back-office staff, the total cost of wages and salaries for non-football employees is likely to have been less than £2.5m.

This takes into account the £223,000 combined cost of salary and pension for the then chief executive, Simon Clegg, and assumes that the remainder of the non-football staff cost an average of £30,000 each, including pay and employment costs, and that part-time employees averaged 50% of full-time hours.

On this basis, and with a similar assumption about part-timers, the cost per head of the football staff would have averaged around £264,000.

The staff numbers do not include either non-executive directors or casual staff employed on matchdays or for coaching sessions.