Other website sections

»Sports Market Reports

»Sports Jobs

»Tenders

»Directory

»Conferences

Clubs should lower players’ basic salaries and introduce performance-related bonuses to help get football’s spiralling finances under control.

That is the view of sports finance expert Dan Jones of Deloitte, who was speaking at a BBC debate on the finances of football held at the Soccerex event in Manchester.

"There's no bonus culture. It's the same, win lose or draw. Why is that allowed to persist?" he said.

BBC chief economics correspondent Hugh Pym pointed out that profitable businesses in the City paid their top executives bonuses there were several times higher than their salaries – a system that is not replicated in football.

He added: "The thing about high player wages is they are often at loss-making clubs. There seems to be a mismatch there which you don't see in other parts of business.”

The BBC reports that wages paid by top-flight English clubs in 2007/08 – the latest season for which figures are available – grew by 23 per cent from the previous season, to £1.2bn.

West Ham co-owner David Gold agreed that high wages were a threat to some clubs, particularly if they get relegated and lose out on cash from television rights deals.

"I don't disagree about players receiving due reward for amazing skills – what I don't want to see is that wage structure take clubs into administration,” he stated.

"You have players earning £60,000 or more a week. Then a club gets relegated and that club is locked into a contract with players."

Sheffield Wednesday chairman Lee Stafford revealed that is what happened to his club when it dropped out of the Premier League in 2000.

"It almost guarantees a downward spiral because you have players that aren't going to want to move on, and clubs aren't going to want to sign them,” he said.

"So your debt builds up, the spirit in your club breaks, the fans see nothing to be optimistic about and the players are not motivated properly because they know they're going to struggle.

"We feel massively disadvantaged by other clubs that are racking up debts –. paying players that they should not be and getting further up the league. It's not a level playing field and we need governance in the game to improve."

Earlier at the Soccerex event, it emerged that Europe's top clubs had succeeded in delaying the full introduction of Uefa's new financial fair play rules.

The rules will apply from 2015 instead of 2012 and will govern the amount of debt clubs can rack up, with bans a possible punishment.