Quote: Paul T - HKR "Go on then - lets get all hypothetical!'"
You were warned...
The full cap for the top 25 earners is £1.6m iirc.
An average of £64k per member of the 25 man squad. I'd divide them into the following four bands:
Very Important Players - Those worth six-figure salaries. Maybe 3-5 in any squad. Michael Dobson would be an example for Hull KR. Going above £160k for any player would be a big step psychologically - 10% of the cap. £200k, an eighth of the cap, and you're definitely getting into the realms of diminishing returns - even a brilliant player needs decent players around him to make a strong team. 3-5 players taking up not much more than £500k.
Regular first-team players - Those others who you'd expect to play when fit, to a lesser or greater degree. Probably earning £50-100k. Say an average of £75k and 10 of them to keep the maths simple, £750k.
Squad players - the sort who are expected to be regularly on the fringes of the first team, competing for a bench spot and filling in for injuries. Likely to have a squad number in the high teens or low twenties. Probably the sort of player NH reports as looking for the wage hike up from ~£35k as their agents market them as filling the emerging (though possibly exaggerated) gaps amongst the ranks of regular first-team players. 8 of them comes to £280k.
Promising youngsters - the sort already with a handful of games under their belts. On less than the squad players, but not for long they hope, and slightly more than those poor impoverished souls simply considered 'youngsters', outside the top 25 earners. 3 at £25k each, is £75k.
Squad grand total 500+750+280+75= £1.605. I bust the cap by £5k, but that is a very simple and rough example of how I guess clubs might structure their cap space.
