Just because you say you are spending upto the cap doesnt mean you are doing so.
After all if you tell everyone you are £300k under the cap, then current players will want a pay rise, fans will be querying why you are not spending to the limit, agents for players looking to move to Saints will also be looking for a big pay rise etc.
The only people who truly know if we are upto the cap limit are the RFL and Saints directors.
My personal suspicion is we are operating below it by some way, because it would make business sense to reduce salary cost base at this time. My rationale is that income will be massively reduced this year, and in the immediate years ahead we will have a large expenditure in the stadium to pay for, during a time of economic depression.
Moving to a new stadium makes financial predictions a bit of a gamble for the first year or so, as Saints wont truly know if they will get a boost in crowds attending, and by how much if any they will increase corporate and other income. Only after they have firm data showing what their income levels will be in the new ground, will they be able to properly analyse if they can afford to pay the full salary cap.
Remember the new stadium is supposed to be Saints financial saviour. Therefore Saints need to ensure that this is the case, and not take the view that a new stadium means they have won the lottery; and as a consequence start spending money they havent got.
I think Leigh Centurions may be a fair example of a club that has recently moved into a new stadium, but have since hit financial difficulty, because they assumed they would have money flooding in. The reality was the new stadium also introduced certain costs they may not have had in the past, and which they dont appear to have budgeted for. At the same time they didnt get any meaningful boost in attendances.
