TODAY’S PAY PACKETS ARE STAGGERING
SOME of the figures knocking around this week are remarkable. Maybe I should have got an agent after all! I used to do all my negotiations but the figures revealed in these pages of money paid to Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paul Pogba show how far clubs will go.
At Arsenal when we won the title in 2002, the average weekly wage was around £10,000 and the bonus was paid out for winning the title and depended on how many matches you played. So if you played every game, you could expect to earn something like £150,000. A lot of money, but a reward for success. And, crucially, it was a team bonus, shared out among the players.
Arsene Wenger’s attitude was: ‘If you play well and are a regular and you are successful, then you deserve the money.’ I agreed with the sentiment. Zlatan earned £999,000 in one month of bonuses alone. Staggering.
I do question the idea of paying bonuses for scoring goals als to an individual.
I never had a goal bonus (fill in the gag here) and I wasn’t aware of any teammates who had, either. I wouldn’t have been happy about it. Why is the striker’s job more importantt than the centre backs’?
I’ve heard of goalkeeperper bonuses for clean sheets, but if I’m putting my head in the way and getting it kicked in to save a goal, why should the keeper get the bonus?
In the Nottingham Forest teams who won the European Cup, Brian Clough would say that Peter Shilton was worth at least 12 points a season. Would Shilton have accepted that he was worth less than an outfield scorer?
When I got into Arsenal’s first team in the mid-Eighties, I was earning £250 a week with a bonus of £400 a game for playing. That was typical for young players to have their breakthrough incentivised. It is a system still enforced today.
Clubs will also often pay players a bonus for the final league position. Again, I don’t question that because it is rewarding achievement.
I would question the idea of putting one player, even one with the stardust quality of Ibrahimovic, on a pedestal.
When we saw Marcus Rashford’s freekick against Celta Vigo last week, that had the ‘ wow’ factor, but would we have seen that if Ibrahimovic had been playing? He takes all the penalties and all the free-kicks at United. And we might now have some idea why!
Yes, he’s good at them but Wayne Rooney wasn’t bad and he gave up that job quickly. Zlatan isn’t the sort of man yyou would pick a fight with. It shows how desperate UnUnited were to sign a player with his star quality that they accepted these demands. Even though it was a ‘free transfer’, it has cost them a fortune.
But it also shines a light oon what happens next. Are theseth outrageous figures the reasonreas why United have been slow tot agree a new contract? The Swede was injured playing for them, so are they really going to allow his contract to run down and say goodbye? He is 35 but he looks younger, fitter and stronger than Rooney.
He has been the leader of United’s attack, scoring freely. Are they going to allow him to move on when, provided he recovers from injury, he looks as if he has much still to offer?
I wonder if he would renegotiate based on his recovery, for a lesser salary or a smaller goal bonus that would increase once he is fit. Maybe that’s not how he does business. And he sure seems to know how to do business.