Derek Llambias reveals NUFC income has been halved

Nov 5 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

NEWCASTLE United are still working with a Premier League wage bill despite dropping out of the division costing them £50million a year.

Managing director Derek Llambias has revealed that despite a summer of savage cost-cutting in which 11 senior players left with only one permanent signing – Peter Løvenkrands – to replace them, the Magpies’ wages are still not at what he considers an “acceptable level” for the division they have unexpectedly found themselves in.

So far the gamble is working, with United top of the table and one of the players they kept, Kevin Nolan, voted by fans as the division’s player of the month for the second consecutive time.

“It’s been extremely painful – it was a shock, it was unthinkable,” Llambias said of relegation. “We did have a business plan in place at the time that we just put into a cupboard, because we thought we never needed to use it.

“We’ve had to move on since then and it’s given us an opportunity to bring the wages down to an acceptable level in the Premier League, but not in the Championship.

“We’ve got the highest wage bill in the Championship and that will increase over a period of months to make sure we give Chris (Hughton, the manager) and the team 100% to get us to where we belong.

“Mike (Ashley, the owner) inherited a very heavy wage bill – and still has some hefty players to pay, but they are good players. They are the guys who are going to get us back up and it’s worth the price if we get back up.”

Llambias has gone on the PR offensive after last week’s revelation of highly controversial plans to sell the naming rights for St James’ Park to make up the shortfall in cash.

The financial chasm between the world’s most lucrative football league and its poor relation has long been acknowledged, but in his BBC interview Llambias – who insists the summer sale of players was designed not to hamper the club’s promotion bid – has now put figures on it.

“It’s huge,” he said. “We’ve dropped from £100m revenue to £50m. A good chunk of that is TV money from the Premier League – £40m. We get a parachute payment of £12.5m.