Thetownend.com

Don't know if anyone else saw football focus last week, but they were saying that man city would pay £400k a week for the right player ie. David Villa.

Now in my eyes, no footballer in this world deserves or should be paid that amount of money! If it does happen then the world of football will start to decline. I think its scandalous. No player would turn that amount of money down.

Thoughts?

Meh, the bubble will burst sooner rather than later. Let them have their fun, they'll regret it in the future.

Fucking hell thats appaling, even more so in the current financial state of the world.

Wont be long before we get the first £1mill a week player.......I remember Keane being touted as one of the first £10k a week players and the uproar back then.

It's a ludicrous sum yes, but I can't see how it's so much more stupid than 150k a week for John Terry.

Footballers wages are stupidly high, we know that.

Manchester City fans would stop smiling once they have to pay £100 for a matchday ticket.

the way there going at the min Villa aint going to want to play in the championship is he! :)

Football has already been ruined by money. Look at the likes of Bournemouth, Luton, Rotherham, Wimbledon, us (although we got lucky), Oxfrod, there's too many to mention!

There are going to be a few teams going under in the next few years and whilst these Premiership clubs are getting more money than they can handle it won't be any of them.

I'm a firm beleiver of pay as you play and performance related wages. Obviously have a standard rate, but then get paid for playing. You see players, like Owen for example, gets injured and just collects his £100k+ a week for doing nothing.

There are people out there struggling to make ends meet, yet these players are raking it in.

See it things like this that get my back up:

Here's a list of a couple of thousand people with personal fortunes ranging from £40m upto £27,700m.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/specials/rich_list/rich_list_search/

Are they any more deserving of their money? What about the Duke of Westminster who's "talent" was to be his Dad's oldest son and consequently inherit significant chunks of Central and West London. OK he's managed to invest the huge fortune he inherited in more property and make even more money, but I think most of us would have managed that.

I'd rather have John Terry pocketing that £7.5m to £8m a year rather than it sitting around in Roman's bank account earning him even more money.

So presumably you think that anyone that is injured at work should have their salary stopped?

Capped.

The difference is that most people on that list are actually wealth creators and provide jobs for people. John Terry doesn't.

Footballer's don't earn their full salary whilst they have a long term injury. Just like most normal jobs, pay from your employer will stop after x many months and after then insurance payments will start. Insurance generally only pays around 65% of earnings up to £50,000 a year and then 33% of earnings above £50,000, so footballers will only be receiving about a third of their normal pay.

Shit, so Keiron Dyer's only getting about 20-30k a week? The poor lamb, how ever is he managing?

How Kieron Dyer gets paid so much is one of worlds great mysteries.

The bloke is fucking shit.

Oh the people that OWN stuff are the wealth creators are they?

Stupid me I always thought that the wealth creators were the people that actually did the work to produce, distribute and exchange goods?

How could Karl and Fred have got it all so wrong?

Why is it when you people get worked up about the economic inequities of our society you always pick on working class people that have done well for themselves and are earning good money? TV presenters, sports stars, pop stars and models you fucking hate them.

But the people who make their money out of the profits that YOU generate through your labour you seem to regard as selfless benefactors.

Roman Abramaovich as a "wealth creator"? Do me a fucking favour.

There is a greater demand for talented footballers than there is supply. If teams want their man and pay over the odds then they do what's best for themselves.

The problem is that teams are willing to spend stupid amounts of money to pay for players, in order to be the best they can possibly be.

No Lumps.

Take a look at No. 92 on that list:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/specials/rich_list/article3759032.ece

He didn't "own stuff" when he started off, but now he does. Because he worked hard, had a bit of business acumen and created several companies, he now employs thousands of people who enjoy jobs and a salary.  They wouldn't have those jobs if it wasn't for him.

He is a wealth creator. If he hasn't got working class roots then you must have one fucked up definition of "working class".

Oh and I bet if you look up the details of most of the TV presenters at the BBC you'll find that they overwhelmingly have amiddle class backround.

thing is its all relative, when you are used to a certain standard it can be tough to change, i couldnt live on mr villas wage.

I was thinking specifically of one Mr J Ross, who always seems to be the example dragged out by outraged Daily Mail readers.

And I didn't argue that every capitalist in the world had inherited their wealth. I simply pointed out that the wealth of any capitalist (that is the class of people that OWN the means of production, distribution and exchange) is accrued from profit (that being the difference between the cost of a product in the market and the costs in terms of raw materials and labour to produce, distribute and sell that product). So they "earn" their money on the basis that they own the factory, offices, distribution network, shops etc, rather than through being involved directly in making or selling anything.

That's not an opinion, it's a statement of fact. How they got to own those things in the first place is a whole other issue. But for every Alan Sugar you're going to find a whole fucking load of Lord Sainsbury's, or Viscount Portman's.

And the argument that without a specific capitalist the jobs of all his employees would disappear is utterly fatuous.You clearly seem to think that a market economy is a good thing, and that it works (despite all the recent evidence to the contrary). Given that, you presumably think that all production is driven by demand (although actually it's driven by the pursuit of profit and the two aren't always the same thing). Any free marketeer would argue that if Amstrad hadn't been making shitty word processors throughout the 1980's and '90's, some other fucker would have been, and they'd have had to employ someone to build, ship and flog the bastards. It may not have been the same people in the some location, but the jobs would still have existed.

It's entertainment for fucksake they entertain the same way a film start entertains. What fucks me off is the footballer is the one who gets the abuse for getting paid so much.. Who in their right mind would turn it down?

It doesn't bother me how much players get.

The real issue is clubs spending more money than they can afford, ending up in administration or folding. If some billionaire wants to piss his money away with a football club then that's up to them, provided the shit doesn't hit the fan when they lose interest or demand their money back.

The football authorities need to put strong rules in place that stop clubs from running up debt they can't afford to service. The strong punishments for going in to administration in the Football League are a good start, but they need to get a lot tougher and apply it to every club.

There needs to be a lot more openness about money in the game as well - full and detailed accounts for clubs, transfer fees and contracts being common knowledge (or known to the football authorities at least) and clubs should be made to prove their financial stability before the start of every season.

How would they do this?
Who would judge whether or not they were stable, given the uncertainty of the economies from which their investors' money is derived?
What would be the punishments for being judged to be instable? We would have been judged to have been instable for the past few years atleast, but we came through it...

No he isn't, or a succession on PL managers woudn't have signed him, and a string of Enland managers wouldn't have picked him.

He just very injury prone and has now reached the atage in his career, a bit like Robbie Fowler, when no ones going to take the chance on him when his current contracts up.

Been thinking about this a lot recently.

Money ruined football in about 1997.

By then the financial incentives of football started to greatly outway the prestige of winning anything.

Back in the late 80's footballers were well paid, but the main incentives were FA Cup finals and the like. Now its money.

Footballs only hope is that internet TV ruins the value of TV rights. In the mean time Im quite happy to watch stupid rich foreigners waste their money in the UK.

Anybody who's got sky (or has done in the past) should hang their heads in shame. Your fault you cunts.

Fuck that - their coverage is great - much better than the beeb :)

I think so too. I get to watch all the Prem league live on sky Italy.

Prem players wages in particular have been obscene for years. Being a closet communist i'm in clover with the current problems, as capitalism is fucked, and therefore not just footballers but people i've never known what they do, will shortly find the days of stupid money for stupid people is coming to an end. Long live Lenin (except he's dead obv)

Ever drunk in a pub that has Sky? Your fault too, cunt.

Yeah I thought about that, and I have to accept some responsibility. But it's still a lesser version of the same evil.

Cunt

I don't have Sky. Twat.

there's no need for that. Classic interweb self obsession. Everybody thinks everybody is talking about them.

Yes, I did think you were talking about me you called me a cunt.

Anyhoo, see you at the pub tomorrow.

awesomeaceness.