Personally, with how we operate - i.e. SISU's only form of investment being short-term high-interest loans - I think our wage bill can realistically only be constructed mainly from consistent sources of income. E.g. Commercial and ticketing revenue, TV money, F&B and sponsorship.
If we get ourselves into a situation of using received transfer fees as a basis from which to establish a wage budget then that's more likely than not to land us in hot water as there's far too many uncertainties and irregularities in football to rely on transfer fees as a consistent source of income and to subsidise a growing wage bill.
And on a base level I’d agree *if* we were speculatively increasing the wage bill on potential future transfer fees. What I’m suggesting is the reverse of that - using fees received as a means to fund future wages. I’ll hypothesise this quickly (and I’ll use round numbers to make it easier to explain so don’t read into the figures used!):
Say we get £8m for Hamer. £2m taken by SISU either for club overheads or as interest payments (rightly or wrongly, it’ll probably happen). This leaves £6m. You could then split that £6m over the next 3 years and increase the wage bill by £2m per year using this income
that has already been received.
In a year’s time, we come to sell Gyokeres and he commands a fee of £12m. Again, £3m cut to SISU leaving £9m. Spread that over 3 years again and you can inflate by a further £3m per year based on income received.
Then one of the players we’ve brought in using Hamer’s funding blossoms and is worth £6m. £1.5m to SISU and £4.5m spread over 3 years again. You’re now in a situation where, instead of having a wage budget in a year of £15m (rough estimate of where we are at the moment) this is organically increased to £21.5m. If the rest of the players signed using those initial Hamer funds fail then their contracts roll off in time for the £2m drop the following year.
It’s just a rough working theory and crucially doesn’t take into account contract extensions but as a framework I think it has legs. For reference, that extra £6.5m that we’ve created on the wage bill for the ‘top performing’ season equates to an additional £125,000 per week on wages.