The sentence the last three advisers would not write down
Eighteen years inside clubs, in recruitment and sporting direction. Boards do not need another report; they need the sentence the last three advisers would not write down.
Wages plus transfer amortisation, against revenue, against peers. It is the single most predictive number in club finance and most clubs below the top division carry it only as a wage bill, which hides the half of the cost that is already committed.
Method
Seventy per cent is the line UEFA drew, and it is a reasonable one at any level: above it a bad season stops being a sporting problem and becomes a solvency problem.
Spend by position
Method
The finding is almost never the total. It is the shape: this club spends a division-leading share on central midfield and a bottom-three share on centre-backs, and has conceded more goals than anybody above it for three seasons.
Not how many players reach a professional contract somewhere — that number flatters everybody. The share of your own first team's minutes played by players you trained, against clubs of your size.
Definition
Club-trained means three or more years at the club between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one. It is the standard definition and it is deliberately stricter than “came through the academy”, which every club defines in the way that suits it.
Decision rights
Written as it actually operates, then as it should. Almost every recruitment problem I am called about turns out to live in the first column.
| Decision | As it operates today | As it should operate |
|---|---|---|
| Identify targets | Manager, informally, plus whoever an agent reached first | Recruitment department, against a written profile per position |
| Agree the budget | Never explicitly — discovered when an offer is refused | Board, once a season, in writing, with a window contingency |
| Approve a signing | President, in the last week of the window | Sporting director, within the agreed budget and profile |
| Veto a signing | Everybody believes they can. In practice, whoever speaks last | Board, on budget only. Not on football judgement |
| Set the wage ceiling | Case by case, which is how the 6.1× spread happened | Written banding by position and age, reviewed annually |
| Change the manager | President alone, usually within 48 hours of a defeat | Board, against criteria agreed at appointment, not at 3–0 down |
Method
Nobody is lying when they describe the process differently. They are describing the part of it they can see, and the fact that three descriptions do not reconcile is itself the finding.
Three engagements. Each one answers a question a board is already arguing about.
Recruitment structure review
Why do we keep signing players nobody wanted?
Academy productivity audit
Is the academy worth what it costs us?
Board advisory
Who tells the board what nobody inside can afford to say?
Why there are no names
No client is named anywhere on this site. Almost none will consent, and the ones who would consent are usually the ones whose boards are least stable — so a page of logos would tell you something true about my clients' governance and nothing about my work. What follows is anonymised to the division and the season, with the numbers intact. If you want a reference, ask me in a conversation and I will arrange one privately.