That's very interesting. I had a quick look and the average number of personnel employed by the club during the year went down from 476 in 2012 to 314 in 2014 (less 125 football staff and less 37 commercial and admin staff) which is what you would expect having sold the scouting and other IP (including the relevant staff) to CFG in 2013. The average in 2013, btw, was 449 in 2013 but that makes sense as it's an average and the transaction happened near the end of the year. Wages decreased by 38 million between 2012 and 2013, again as you would expect.
As you say, wages went up considerably between 2016 and 2017 and so did staff numbers, up from 320 in 2016 to 449 in 2018 (again using a two year comparison to eliminate the averaging effect in 2017). This brought the staff numbers back into line with the pre-IP sale numbers of 2012.
Do you think it's possible the two revenue-generating IP deals (coaching IP to CFG and image rights to Fordham) were both cancelled in 2017, leading to the increase in staff numbers and wages? Why in 2017? Not sure, but could it be to do with the end of the monitoring period as part of the 2014 settlement?
