Thetownend.com

John O'Shea on 80k a week. What is the world coming to I ask thee.

bollocks. which paper says so?

It's been rumoured in the sun, but it's actual fact confirmed by the OT press team.

Can't think how football clubs become unable to service their debts.

Next thing you'll be telling me he's got 'image rights'....

if thats not showing ambition, i dont know what it :-p

I saw on the BBC earlier about getting O'Shea on a £16.5 million contract...I think I've just fallen out of love with football.

A part of me has died reading this

John fucking O'shea

Happened to me a long time ago! I think that's why I don't seem to be too annoyed with Swindon underperforming this season.

Last season didn't help. Investing so much time and emotion only to be disappointed at the final hurdle.

It's all about Scrabble these days.

His brother Rick is one hell of a goalkeeper

Don't understand why people are so surprised at this. Wages across the board in the PL are obscene (and good chunks of the Championship). While all the headlines naturally focus on the Gerrards, Lampards and Rooneys (because they're at the obscenest end of obscene), there's not many at that level on much less than £1m a year. Some of whom don't even make the first team. Football's been bankrupting itself for years

The bubble has got to burst one day.  All Man United is doing (financially) these days is servicing its debts.  (In fact, all it's doing in every respect is servicing its debts.)  Something has got to give.

I have seen him also the ball goes everywere

I don't see the problem, he's worth every penny in my opinion.

if rooney is on the £200-£250grand a week as rumoured by different sources, then it seems about right to me

Firstly, that is a big if. Secondly, even if it is true, taking THE most obscenely paid player and using them as the standard to which you measure all other wages makes no sense.

They say football is being run more and more like a business, when in fact simple economics tell you you don't pay wages any higher than the value of the employee to your business. The fact that clubs are losing so much money suggests they've lost sight of this basic principle. Wayne Rooney may well have made United a shed-load in terms of shirt sales and in terms of where he got them last year. However, I'm not quite sure how John O'Shea contributes over £80,000 to the United coffers.

Edit: That second bit was a general rant, not directed at you arriba!

if players like danny gabbidon are on £50,000 a week.£80,000 for a player who has helped his club win countless trophies is not excessive by todays wage structures.

using rooneys wage to measure a team mates makes perfect sense to me too.

Dave Kitson on 19k a week at pompey is more shocking I think, as is BWP and a couple of others on 13k a week at Plymuff

I don't get why anyone would be surprised by this either. And to be honest there are plenty of people in other industries earning far more for far worse.

who said I was surprised? Merely appalled.

What, you mean you lot don't earn 80k a week? I'd better keep quiet then.

Oh do get real - how many people do you think earn £4m plus a year ? 

Ivanovic at Chelsea being offered a 60k/wk contract. Is O'Shea worth the 20k extra?

No, because Ivanovic is better.

American Football players, Formula One Drivers... think that's about it.

I don't know the numbers, but I imagine there are plenty of men in the city who helped cause the recession whose bonuses alone eclipse O'Shea's salary. Chuck in a few arms dealers, oil barons, board members of businesses that exploit sweat shop labour, those ordering the bulldozing of the rainforests, etc, and it's probably more than you think.

At least O'Shea isn't hurting anyone kicking a sack of air around a field.

Outside of sport, there's plenty in banking (including bonuses obviously), some TV presenters (Adrian Chiles, Wossy etc), plus senior executives at large companies (e.g. the last but one CEO at Vodafone who royally fucked up and was given a £10m "golden fuck off" which was basically his annual salary plus on-target bonus had he been on target which he wasn't which was why he was being sacked, making it all the more ridiculous). But the fact that others are also paid stupid amounts doesn't make paying it to footballers any better

Well he bloody should be, what kind of defender is he?

Well, at least 100 presumably, as the Chief Execs of the FTSE 100 "earn" an average of £4.9m pa

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/oct/28/uk-boardroo-pay-soars

Surely quite a few of those 100 will be on under £4m if the average is £4.9m, paul? Depending on the distribution of course.

Nice statistical refutery fB - that never came up in the classics did it pauld ?

Presumably that would be a bell end curve ?

Oh bugger. See, that's why they're (well, some of them) on over 4m quid a year and I'm not.

haha, genius.

Nope, pretty much anything beyond a wine-dark sea, a wooden horse or a symposium and I'm all ends up, truth be told.
pwned :)

Depends if that's the mean, median, mode or range.

If we presume the mean, and take the top three which are mentionedin the article (90m, 38.4m and 26.9m), out of the total 490m pot, it leaves 334.7m left for the remaining 97. Or an average of 3.45m. Poor blokes.

It could be the median I suppose, given the above top three that would mean that the mean (hehe) would be a lot higher than 4.9m, which would make the median a strange choice for the angle of the article.

Don't know what the mode would show in a fairly small set of non discrete data, you'd have to group in sets of millions wouldn't you?

And the range isn't a type of average is it sam? I've never heard it described like that anyway.

I have no idea what this has to do with footballers anymore, but it seems fair to say that maybe even a majority of the FTSE100 chief execs earn less than 4m a year.

Now to watch some paint dry?

I think the one thing we can all agree on is that I chose an appallingly bad example and I've fucked up rather badly. Again.

I wouldnt mind these high wages if the cunts actually paid tax but they stick it all in off shore accounts and pay about as much tax as regular folk.

Actually O'Shea, and for that matter Rooney's wages are a really poor example of "football bankrupting itself" as (mutters through clenched teeth) the debt aside Utd are actually an incredibly well governed and financially prudent club.

They're salaries bill per annum is a piddling 45% of turnover, where Man City's is about 106% or something.

If Utd hadn't been taken over by some yank leprechaun in a leveraged deal, shortly before the international debt markets went into a tailspin. They'd be quids in.

As it is they're estimated to be sitting on a cash pool upwards of £100,000,000 at the moment.