West Ham’s highest-paid players’ wages compared to the Championship’s top earners | OneFootball

West Ham will have the biggest stadium in the Championship next season and also one of the most expensive squads after suffering relegation from the Premier League.

Their fate was sealed on the final day, when a win over Leeds wasn’t enough to lift them out of the bottom three due to Tottenham winning as well.

Whichever club went down was going to be an outlier in next season’s Championship. Big club, big stadium, big wage bill.

West Ham are the ones now facing the reality of losing their Premier League status. But how many of the best-paid players in the Championship next season will be theirs?

As things stand, here are the 10 highest-paid players from existing Championship clubs this season (not counting any who have been promoted or relegated).

Championship’s highest-paid players

1. Finn Azaz – £50,000 per week 2. Carlos Vicente – £50,000 3. Nat Phillips – £40,000 4. Cameron Archer – £40,000 5. Mads Roerslev Rasmussen – £40,000 6. Jack Stephens – £40,000 7. Alex McCarthy – £40,000 8. Ben Gibson – £35,000 9. Kyogo Furuhashi – £35,000 10. Chris Mepham, Japhet Tanganga and Shane Duffy – £35,000

Ironically, most of the Championship’s top earners this season played for Leicester, who got relegated to League One.

Those players have been removed from the top 10, along with any players that were on loan at Championship clubs this season.

The highest earners left over are on £50,000 per week; they are Southampton’s Finn Azaz and Birmingham’s Carlos Vicente.

Incidentally, Alex McCarthy and Shane Duffy’s contracts with Southampton and Norwich respectively are due to expire next month, so they might be taken out of the equation.

West Ham’s highest-paid players

1. Jarrod Bowen – £150,000 per week 2. Alphonse Areola – £120,000 3. James Ward-Prowse – £115,000 4. Max Kilman – £100,000 5. Aaron Wan-Bissaka – £90,000 6. Tomas Soucek – £90,000 7. Jean-Clair Todibo – £80,000 8. Taty Castellanos – £75,000 9. Adama Traore – £70,000 10. Mateus Fernandes – £60,000

West Ham’s highest earner, captain Jarrod Bowen, currently takes home twice as much money as the best-paid player remaining in the Championship.

Goalkeeper Alphonse Areola and defender Max Kilman are also on six-figure salaries. James Ward-Prowse, meanwhile, has had more than half his salary covered by Burnley while on loan this season, but would have previously earned up to £115,000 per week at the London Stadium.

The only player among West Ham’s top 10 earners due to be out of contract before next season is January signing Adama Traore.

Once he is taken out, the player entering West Ham’s top 10 would be £55,000-a-week man Kyle Walker-Peters.

However, reports have stated that there are clauses in the contracts of West Ham’s players that will see their wages cut by up to half.

Thus, if we divide each player’s salary by two, and also factor in the same for relegated Wolves midfielder Joao Gomes (who has been heavily linked with Atletico Madrid, mind you), the Championship’s top earners list next season, before any exits, could look something like this…

Provisional Championship top earners next season

1. Jarrod Bowen – £75,000 per week 2. Alphonse Areola – £60,000 3. James Ward-Prowse – £57,500 4. Joao Gomes – £52,500 5. Max Kilman – £50,000 6. Finn Azaz – £50,000 7. Carlos Vicente – £50,000 8. Aaron Wan-Bissaka – £45,000 9. Tomas Soucek – £45,000 10. Six players (including Jean-Clair Todibo) – £40,000

West Ham would be accounting for more than half of the top 10 as things stand. Some of the players they are most at risk of losing, funnily enough, aren’t among them.

Mateus Fernandes, Crysencio Summerville and Konstantinos Mavropanos could all find themselves in demand this summer.

West Ham might actually find it harder to shift some of their top earners; Kilman has had his critics, Areola isn’t a guaranteed number one anymore and Ward-Prowse has been shipped around on loan in recent times.

It could be a tough summer rebuild for the Hammers.