The billion-pound game

ENGLISH football spent more than £1bn on players last year, according to a new financial survey of the game, but for 500 professionals today, the immediate future looks depressingly bleak.

Released from their contracts, some of them even after enjoying excellent seasons, they are unlikely to benefit from the record investment in playing talent.

Big money? A wage of any kind would be welcome for the likes of Keith Gillespie, once of Manchester United, most recently of Leicester and now technically unemployed.

As the small percentage of players at the pinnacle of the game indulge themselves at the most luxurious and expensive sunspots on the globe, some of their brethren are wondering where the next mortgage payment is coming from. In reality, a large number of players have to lower their sights.

One Championship chairman revealed this week that he had been offered two players from a Premiership club who have qualified for next season's Champions League.

He was told that they both wanted £600,000-a-year, a £50,000 signing-on fee each, with their agent taking a further £150,000 per player for facilitating the deal. They were told to go away and become realistic.

According to a wide-ranging survey of football finance by the accountants Deloitte and Touche, the English game has never been healthier. Based on figures for the 2003-04 season, they say that business is booming ? the Premiership in particular.

'England are the European champions in a £ 7.5bn game,' say Deloitte of a league that, in Liverpool and Chelsea, boasts the winners of the European Cup as well as a beaten semi-finalist. Even the tax man should be happy, given the £600m that was paid to the Exchequer by the leading 92 clubs.

By earning £1.3bn in revenue, the Premiership clubs cemented their position as 'the biggest football league in Europe'. That is an average of £66.3m per club - over 50% more than Italy's Serie A, the Premiership's nearest competitor.

Premiership clubs, added Deloitte, also recorded 'significantly higher operating profitability than their European counterparts'.

'The Premiership clubs returned record operating profits of £149m (or £7.5m per club). Within the other 'big five' leagues, only German clubs recorded operating profits and even these were substantially lower than in 2002-03.'

Dan Jones, partner in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, said: 'The Premiership continues to go from strength to strength with solid top-line growth.'

But that will be of little comfort to those now looking for work, the 500 or so players who could be forced to seek alternative employment ? unskilled, badly-paid jobs in many cases - if they are unable to secure a contract at a new club. The problem, it seems, arises when the amount clubs spend on players grows out of proportion to the turnover the club can generate.

Most clubs try to keep wages below 60% of turnover. At Wigan, a club who recently celebrated their promotion to the Premiership, the wage bill was more than their turnover, a staggering 127%. Proof, if ever it were needed, of Wigan's reliance on chairman and benefactor Dave Whelan.

It is not a great deal better at Coventry (114%) or Cardiff (104%). Chelsea, at 80%, are the least prudent of all the Premiership clubs. The best performers are Manchester United and Bolton, with ratios below 50%. It shows what a fine job Sam Allardyce has done.

In fairness to the majority of Premiership clubs, they are working hard to improve matters. Take away Chelsea and the average ratio would have dropped from 61 to 59%. In the Championship, too, there is cause for optimism, with the wages to turnover ratio dropping from 89 to 72%.

Across the 92 League clubs, however - and the prime reason why so many players are still losing their jobs - English football is still operating at a pre-tax loss of £195m. Chelsea account for £88m of that, but as Deloitte's Alan Switzer argues: 'There is still much work to be done.'

In the meantime, 500 players are facing an anxious summer. Some of them have already made a fabulous living from the game. Steve McManaman, released by Manchester City but fantastically well paid while he was at Real Madrid, need never work again.

Steve Stone and Ian Walker, like McManaman former England internationals, have also benefited from the wages explosion that followed the formation of the Premier League. Others, however, have not been quite so fortunate.