WARRIORS' co-owner Jason Whittingham has come out and said that the club do indeed spend up to the £7m salary cap, which generates a fair few questions.

Firstly, if this is to be true, then you have to say that the money has not been best spent.

Granted, the club might not have the pull of an Exeter or Bristol, but the Bears, for example, most certainly spend up to the cap and look where they are.

Exeter were playing Championship rugby not all that long ago and again, look where they are.

The likes of Francois Hougaard and Melani Nanai, you would have thought, have to be up there as the higher earners in the current squad, having both been signed from Super Rugby.

Nanai has been unfortunate with injuries hampering his time at Worcester so far but we all know of his quality and in Hougaard we have a solid example of what to expect from a marquee player.

However, under Alan Solomons in particular, the focus has been on the youth and promoting within and we have seen the benefits of that in Ted Hill, Ollie Lawrence and more recently, Oli Morris.

If Whittingham says the club are spending to the cap then clearly the money is surely spread out quite considerably, bar maybe Hougaard and Nanai who might be on a bit more.

A lot of the current squad are from the academy so it does tend to suggest that the recruitment strategy has not exactly gone to plan as the younger players are outperforming those who have been brought in.

The majority of quality players that have performed consistently for Worcester have not been those on the highest salaries.

The second question is that, with the cap coming down from £7m to £5m at the start of next season, Warriors will have to reduce their wage bill somewhat.

Losing Duncan Weir will no doubt bring that down but with Duhan van der Merwe coming in the summer, that won't help reduce it.

So do they need to lose more? Francois Hougaard is being linked with a move away at the end of his contract in the summer and that might very well be necessary and maybe even Cornell du Preez could be on the way out, according to some rumours.

Therefore, can Worcester replace the likes of Weir and Hougaard and stay within the cap?

But it's clear, that they do.

Losing the experienced heads of Weir and Hougaard would be catastrophic if the club cannot replace them due to the salary cap regulations and you fear for them in that instance.

Those two need to be replaced with first-team quality, experienced Premiership players, even if that means shipping more players off to do it.

Worcester are second bottom in the league and would be below Gloucester had it not been for the Harlequins forfeit, so things need to change, quickly.

This news certainly will come as a worry to fans.