I turn my attention today to Manchester City.
The Sunday Times carried a front of the Sports section piece about there being a clear out of talent (??) from the City wage bill in the transfer window.
The names mentioned will sound familiar... Wayne Bridge, Sean Wright-Phillips - among others.
Players that have played for England (if not as regular starters) but cannot maintain a regular place in the City side... more on that later.
City have spent, let's face it - GAZILLIONS!
And so far what has it got them?
Well the good news is they appear to be fourth in the Premiership... only 3 points adrift of the leaders.
The bad news is they are only three points ahead of Spurs, 6 ahead of Bolton and Sunderland and only 7/8 ahead of West Brom and Stoke! I think its fair to say that Stoke and West brom have spent a fair bit less than Man City.
The point isnt so much that they seem to have got very little in return for spending all that extra cash (although that is part of the point too), the point is that all of the transfer fees and all of the wages spent on a significant percentage of their playing assets are now going to be written off.
In your business that would be called failure.
I am not having a go at Mancini - I think he is quite a talented bloke. I am not even having a go at mark hughes, i think he is quite a Welsh bloke.
What i am having a go at is the concept that your reward strategy can involve throwing money at talent for no return.
Because while the retrun of 4th place - with a remaining fighting chance of winning a title might seem to be good - it wasnt achieved by virtue of all the talent being paid for.
At the end of the day wayne Bridge and Sean Wright-Phillips are journeyman who have never held down a starting place in a premiership team since they started playing for big clubs! Not at Chelsea and not at Man City. They still sign for big clubs - because the teams where they could play 90 minutes every saturday won't pay them what they are "worth", at least in their own eyes.
The warning sign should be they prefer to get paid big bucks to sit on the bench than smaller bucks to play actual football.
The thing is that there are a lot of mediocre people in the commercial world who are also benefitting from poor reward strategies that allow them to get paid and don;t manage their performance.
Creating a successful business, like creating a successful football team is about more than wages. If all your employees want is wages, you have got the wrong employees.
And before Bozo's Antagonist writes in - i am not saying wanting wages is wrong - I a saying wanting ONLY wages is wrong... and if thats all you can offer your employees, all you will get is 4th place and a load of people you wish you could get rid of in the january transfer window
Enjoy
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