By how much would your wages have to be multiplied to move to Manchester? Mrs B went to Uni there (shudders at the memory). Three years without the sun. What most United fans don't know is that it's grim up north...........I mean look at that rain.
Sort of agree and disagree with you here rcl. If course the normal man is affected far higher than the footballer when it comes to doubling of wages, but these guys are still want to live comfortably, maybe not the ones in uk but the ones from the latin countries are probably supporting extended family and can make sure they are fine. Then you need to consider they probably wont ever work again when you were on 70k a week and now you will probably end up as a binman earning 8 quid an hour. Its a lot of money and if they had any brains would invest it wisely but you know footballers arent the brightest. You only need to read how people always seem to squander their national lottery money to see how easy it is to spend 18m. As for staff at clubs getting paid peanutd, that is appalling but that is the clubs neing greedy
Incoming : science and engineering + LONG ... !!! The premise is that a footballer must make hay while the sun shines. So assume the world retires from work at age 60, and a footballer at age 35. So they must earn enough money in their career to cover 60 til death (like the world does) , and for 25 years of no work between 35-60. So assume to make it thru those 25 yrs, you need 100K pa nett. So 25 * 100K = 2.5 million nett you need at the minimum. Assuming you are on PAYE (which nearly all footballers are not - they use PSCs etc) , then you are effectively paying 50% tax. So that means you need to earn 5 million gross to get 2.5 million nett. Assuming there will be 10 years of your career where your value is high (and wages accordingly) . So in those years you need to be earning 500K pa gross. Assuming a 50 week year then that is 10K/week gross wage. So the question is : 100K pa nett is not enough for you to live on ?? 100K pa is a lot of money to live on, and a lot of families have comfortable lives living on a lot less. Footballers have earned more than the common man over the years, but never has the disconnect between their wages and the common man been more obscene.
Barry Fry's said that he met with Levy last week to discuss a possible move for Luke McGee, going so far as to say the deal he pitched as a free transfer with a hefty sell-on fee attached.
The standoff over Ross Barkley's new contract at Everton is not expected to be resolved before the end of the season, despite Ronald Koeman suggesting he is prepared to sell the 23-year-old before his current deal runs out next summer.(Guardian) Do you think we've turned his head?
Perhaps. However, I think there's enough merit in him for Poch to have a go at working his usual magic. Depends on the asking price, of course.
Update on the McGee rumours: it didn't take long before the hacks somehow managed to twist this into reporting that we won't be making Pau Lopez's loan a permanent. Here's the logic they're using: Barry Fry states that he was told Spurs are signing a new keeper in the summer, which would make McGee surplus to requirements. The hacks decided to take this literally, believing that we will be signing a New Keeper in the summer, and as a result they believe that means Lopez will be off. Just a thought: if we take up the option to make Lopez's loan move permanent, wouldn't that mean we have... *drum roll* ...SIGNED A NEW KEEPER? It says a lot that there are more Spurs fans encouraging him to sign a new contract than Everton ones.
I can't see Levy going for that. McGee's just had a very good season, by all accounts. It depends on how Pochettino sees him, but I'd guess either a contract extension and another loan or a proper deal. The sell-on clause might still be there, but a fee wouldn't be unreasonable as well.
I wouldn't mind signing Barkley, as long as we don't overpay for him. He's got potential and seems to have the versatility that works well for our best attacking players. If Pochettino could get him to push himself and improve, then he'd be a welcome addition. England squads would start to become a little routine, though. Southgate's pissed me off enough already.
Barkley is certainly not a world beater and is very inconsistent. However he has shown he has the ability so if Poch can get him up to scratch i reckon he'd be a great player. With him, it's all about consistency, making sure he learns how to play the position properly and actually working a bit harder (in my opinion). He's still relatively young so its not too far fetched
Here's the simple reason why I'm against the idea of signing Barkley: who will he replace? If we're signing him as an attacking midfielder, who do we drop out of Alli, Eriksen or Son - or Lamela for that matter? We have four players who would all rightfully expect to be starting 20-30 games next season, so adding Barkley to the mix strikes me as being similar to when Comollo thought it'd be a great idea to piss £16.5m on Barrent Dent when we had Berbatov, Keane and Defoe vying for starts Similarly, I cannot see how he'd fit in as a central midfielder, given he simply cannot replicate Dembele's style of play which is crucial to us, while at the same time he'd be expecting starts so he'd be standing in the way of Winks' development - and to be frank, Winks looks like the better long-term option. At that point it becomes one of two things: paying £20m for a utility player (which Chelsea and the Manchester clubs can do without blinking, but the rest of the league wouldn't) or a £20m punt - because that worked out so well with Sissoko, didn't it?
Barkley can play in either Dembele's role or one of the attacking two or three positions, depending on our system. We need to build a strong squad and he can fight for a place in the first XI or give us a decent option off the bench. We'll have plenty of games again next season and we didn't have the depth to deal with it in this campaign. I wouldn't see him as an immediate starter, but then I said that about Dier and Alli. There's a talented player in there somewhere and he'd also add to our homegrown quota. I can definitely see why we'd be interested, which I really couldn't say about Sissoko or our yearly winger.
At the moment, Barkley doesn't seem to know his own position, he's got the passing range and can avoid tackles ala dembele (not quite got his strength though ) and its whether he has that tackling and discipline to play that DM role. He has shown flashes of quality up front, but obviously no where near Alli or Eriksen. He'd be a much better bet than Sissoko, for starters Sissoko couldn't even make the CM spot for Newcastle, has no technical ability and is pretty much an athlete without the work ethic. 20m is a big gamble, but speaking to you boys across the season your complaints are you have no game changers on the bench (sissoko and Jansen) and that against West Ham you had no one to build the play up in midfield by beating a man (Wanyama and Dier) I think potentially Barkley resolves this although at 20m if you can get him playing (and i've never rated this ****er) if you can train him properly.
Honestly, due to his HG status I can see him following the path of Jack Rodwell, Scott Sinclair and Fabian Delph - getting rich(er) while helping City fulfill their HG quota, but not actually playing.
It appears that his choices may be to stay, to join us, to quit football and join City or to do a Francis Jeffers and become a Goon. Given that the first option involves being sucker punched by criminals, it should be an easy decision!
Hahaha. Trust big gob Barry to come along and let the cat out of the bag. I bet Levy has been on the phone to him telling him to keep his trap shut.
I don't really see where he'd fit in tbh. Just a bulkier, inferior version of Alli. I am more than happy going in to next season with Alli, Eriksen, Son & Lamela as our options for the 2 AM places. Sell/loan out Onomah, sell the two apostrophes and donate Sissoko to Barnardos. What I feel we lack is a pacy player full of tricks to bring on from the bench and scare the ****e out of the opposition. Son is the closest to this but I think we've been crying out for an upgrade on a Lennon type player since he left. N'jie and N'koudou have both flopped but were clearly signed with this in mind. We urgently need a player to put the opposition on the back foot; someone with such a repertoire of tricks and pace that they can outsmart even the most organised of parked buses. For this reason, I'm happier to see us linked with Zaha and Mahrez than I am Barkley. We are still in search of that type of player and I for one would prefer we cough up and pay for a proven PL talent.
