£12k a week? After a promotion bonus? I doubt it. Weren't Lambert and Fonte meant to be on close to that in League One? I doubt he would. By all accounts his wages are currently very high and he's 27, will be 28 in February. If he'd left this summer on lower wages then he'd basically have one more shot at getting a big contract and the chances of that contract being as big as the one he's on now are slim. Why sacrifice guaranteed big wages for the slim possibility of big wages in the future? Particularly when you have reason to feel harshly treated by the club you're contracted to. On a separate note, all this talk of "Does he really want to play?" is bollocks. He seem to want to play but it's not necessarily his top priority and I would agree. His priority shouldn't be playing football at all costs, it should be providing for his family. The sensible thing for all parties would be for him to go out on loan and for Southampton to pay some of his wages. This isn't some bizarre request or display of player power, it's pretty standard when a bigger club has given an unwanted player wages that are too high and has to get him (at least partially) off the wage bill by loaning him to a smaller club. Man City paid a fair chunk of wages for several of their players that went out on loan, Liverpool certainly paid wages to Andy Carroll when he was at West Ham and probably had to pay some of Joe Cole's wages while he was in France as well as Aquilani's during his loan spells. I'm sure there are many other examples - Man Utd possibly pay some of Bebe's wages while he's playing for small Portuguese clubs. As for not wanting to pay a player to play for another team on principle. Presumably that means you'd rather pay him £20k a week to sit on his arse than £5k a week to play elsewhere. Who's cutting their nose off to spite their face now?
Yes but as a point of principle it shows the club aren't going to be messed about either by a player or another team, plus the club can afford it. It's all conjecture at this stage too, and of course Dan is spot on in saying that it would be crazy to let him go for 75% at this stage of the window when 100% could easily happen toward the end. I don't buy the 'providing for family' line I'm afraid, when we're talking about the difference between 750k p/a and 1m. If he wants to provide, he should be doing all he can to keep himself at maximum value for the longest time possible....
None of us knows his personal circumstance, but someone else correctly said that he has played in lower leagues all his life and getting towards the end of his career this is his first really big contract. Why would he give that up when that £250k per year for two years could add 10% or more onto his total career earnings?
He'll be 29 at the end of his contract, so it's likely he'll only get one more contract after that, and that will be less than what he's on now, so the point stands. That half a million you are dismissing could be 10% or more of his total career earnings. That's not insignificant, especially for someone who may have to support themselves and their lifestyle for another 50 or 60 years after retirement. We can talk about inflated wages and greed but Sharp is far from the highest echelons of earners in football and from his point of view, he will want to maximise his earnings as much as possible and who can really blame him?
No, sorry, excuse me if I find it really, really hard to feel sympathy for an average to decent footballer because he'll have to somehow find a way of surviving on £750k p/a rather than 1m.......
The club hasn't been messed about by anyone (except possibly Cortese or whoever approved Sharp's contract). This isn't just a disgruntled player agitating for a move, it's a player who's signed, done well for the club and then been told he's not wanted. The club gave Billy Sharp a 3 and a half year contract with big wages and 6 months into that contract (after an expected promotion) decided he was no longer wanted. The only person who's been messed about is Billy Sharp. The idea that it's crazy to let him go for 75% at this stage of the window when someone may come in and pay 100% later doesn't add up either because we pay his full wages every week that he's here. There's very little financial gain to be made holding out for a club to pay his full wages. If you assume he's on 20k p/w then if he'd gone on loan for a year from the start of July with the other club paying 75% of his wages our wage contribution over that year would be £260k. Between July and now we've already paid him £160-180k in wages. If he goes out on loan on deadline day in November we'll have paid him over £400k in wages by that point. That's also completely discounting the argument that we have something of a moral obligation to him seeing as we changed our mind about his 3 and a half year contract after just 6 months. As PTF says, the wages Sharp is on now will be much bigger than anywhere he's been before and are likely bigger than anything he's going to get anywhere else before he retires. Clubs like Doncaster and Scunthorpe will have paid him relatively low wages and his contract with Southampton will quite possibly earn him more than the rest of career combined. It's not about surviving on £750k p/a instead of £1m p/a. Billy Sharp is the sort of player who will probably have to find other work after he retires and an extra half a million in the bank may make a big difference to the rest of his life.
The clubs coming in for Billy are possibly thinking SFC have too much money and will squeeze us for every penny they can, its all part of negotiations, Billy may have accepted reduced wages and SFC maybe be happy then the so called buying clubs may try to negotiate for an even better deal.
Sorry, I phrased my point quite badly - I don't mean to imply that the club is being held to ransom by Billy or any other team, my main point is that I don't believe that the onus to 'sort this out' should rest solely on the shoulders of SFC. I'd like to see Billy taking some initiative for his career here too. As always, there's likely a happy medium somewhere, but I don't at all blame the club for holding out to the end of the loan window to see if a better deal can be negotiated.
I'm sure his agent is working very hard. But it's just not in Sharp's interest to take a pay cut when he doesn't have to. And I agree with you, the club is well within its rights to seek the best possible deal for them as well. No-one is cheating anyone else here, it's just the way business works.
I can see both sides of this argument. Whilst it seems to some that holding out to earn £1m pa rather than £750k is holding the club to ransom, they are forgetting that he only has a very short career to earn effectively everything he can and so £500k will make a big difference to his long-term lifestyle if he foregoes it. Similarly he signed a contract that he thought meant if we got promoted he would earn £1m pa and play in the Prem if we made it. He helped us get to the Prem, rightly or wrongly wasn't given a chance to play and is now looking after himself by holding out for what he can financially. I do not condone it but I do understand it. Likewise, the club have every right to hold out for someone to pay 100% of the wages of a player they are not paying a transfer fee for and are obtaining the services of. The problem here is only championship clubs are interested and we weren't paying him that sort of money in that league and nor can other teams. Personally I hate seeing good players rot in the reserves when we could either get him off the wage bill in part or full and maybe see if he is up to it or at least have him in the shop window... How much will he be worth next season if he doesn't go out on loan and play? At that stage he will definitely just sit his contract out because 1-2 years of little or no football is almost the end for him. I also would have liked to seen him given a chance because maybe he could have nicked the odd goal or two coming off the bench or given our other forwards a rest for cup games etc. It is a difficult one to resolve and it doesn't make sense applying normal wage standards to this argument because footballers don't earn them. I'd love to have the choice between £750k pa or £1m pa but then again no-one is willing to pay me that. If they were stupid enough and gave me a contract then sought to back out on it, would I fight to keep the money if there was no hope of a similar deal? Too damn right!
Just read on the BBC website that Reading are hoping to sign a loan striker after drawing a blank in the window. It wouldn't surprise me if they do go for Sharp due to the close proximity of Reading to Southampton, the fact he knows Nigel well and the fact that Reading must be one of the clubs with more available funds due to parachute payments.
I think you have to name them if they are eligible....hence Forte and Lee as well. There is no way unless an asteroid hits the team bus that they will play.
Yep, if there is space in the squad, and players eligibible to fill it, they have to be included. We leave people out if we have spaces Martin, Lee, Forte & Barnard also named ... none of them will even come remotely close to playing on the subs bench, let alone a PL game.
Can someone show me where this rule is stipulated? I've heard people talk about it a lot on here but I've not heard it from anywhere else.
How much did we pay for Billy? It does seem the current team of coaches, not to mention the last team of coaches, don't think he is up to the grade for PL football. So why the heck did we buy him in the first place? Same with Lee he is an international for goodness sake he was never given a fair chance either. Have to say that the coaches and chairman made some extraordinary decisions in regards to these players.....Lets face it, it could be argued they were a waste of money although I accept they helped us through the final stages of the championship. Would the 6/7 goals scored between them made that much difference to any of the results. Just seems funny to me why they are suddenly out in the cold.
£1.8m, and he was clearly bought to score some goals to get us over the line regarding promotion. I'd say that's cheap considering without him we may not have made it. Lee was free, though his salary was quite generous from what I head. I think he was bought with the premier league in mind but for whatever reason (injuries, failing to adapt, etc) he didn't reach the level that was expected.
