Jones was desperate to sign, but even then was a good enough actor to keep a poker face during talks, with Fotherby and board member Peter Ridsdale, in the latter’s office at club sponsors Top Man. Agents had started to appear in football, but Jones negotiated himself. He remembers seeing a bottle of champagne on the table – an early glimpse of the largesse Ridsdale notoriously brought to Premiership-era Leeds United as chairman – and thinking “‘I’ve got him. I was on £500 a week and asked for two and a half grand, plus a BMW. With side skirts. He never even twitched. I remember thinking ‘Fack. I could have doubled it.’” But money was a side issue. Jones had arrived at a club where he knew he could play a major part in something special. “Alright, Leeds were in the Second Division, but now I could really become someone,” he explains. “This wasn’t Wimbledon, where people tread on you like fackin’ beetles. All of a sudden, when you walk through the jungle, you’re this big fackin’ white leopard! Someone that’s respected.”
Mind you, if it's Ken Bates who you're trying to negotiate with, that champagne bottle would be replaced by tap water. And Jones would have had to take a wage cut.
2.5 k a week was a hell of a lot in the late 80s! You ask Strachan why he dropped a league and came to us, because first & foremost we offered him a blinding deal.
I think Billy is trying to allege that players we're trying to renegotiate contracts with are attempting to feather their nests somewhat.
Thing is, I would disagree. Championship players are not on the same sort of silly money, and what they do earn during their career has to last them for their lives, because how many footballers have degrees?
The days when there was a buzz about the club, when something special was happening and players could sense it and wanted to be part of it. That buzz has long gone, it has been replaced with captains being sold, contracts being failed and third rate signings coming in due to lack of funding from a chairman.
This is how football clubs should have changed. Every player should have some other sideline that they fill their time with - education, coaching, refereeing, a business, property, hobbies where they learn another skill, charity work, radio work, tv work, internet business etc etc and every one should be advised how to invest their money instead of just frittering it away. Clubs should be taking care of their employees like they are family, not leaving them to their own devices. Not one of these buggers should be sat on their arses once their hour and a half work that day is over. A Championship salary averaging £150k-£200k per year over a 15 year career is enough to last you a lifetime if you invest well and use the money for long term, while you use your spare time well to build somehting for yourself for when your playing career is over.
The simple truth is players like Bradley Johnson or Neil Killkenny are nothing more than decent players who have been lucky to earn what they have, without having that much technical skill or ability. Why shouldn't they earn as much as someone is daft enough to pay them? I would suggest that there is hardly anyone on this forum who would turn down £7,000 per week to play football, even if you knew you actually weren't that much better technically as anyone else, but kept yourself fit and was willing to sacrifice the pints down the pub at weekends?
