http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/may/01/premier-league-clubs-record-wages I believe that makes Cortese the first ever Premier League CEO to earn over £2m per season in his role. Mad. DTLW
He played a key role in turning a company with a turnover of £9m in 2008/09 into one which in 2013/14 will have a turnover of over £100m.
It's not much more than a lot of PL players earn to be fair. And he was the main person responsible for our rise back to the premier league. It doesn't say if any of that was a bonus.
Of course it's mad, but everything is relative. I appreciated Kevin Phillips mentioning that he'd spent his career kicking a bit of leather around, because that's all it amounts to in the end. He'd got it in perspective. It doesn't put food on the table. It serves no direct useful purpose. However, it has an amazing significance in many people's lives, and therefore has a value. Think about it. No football, no Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber, for example.
Gaining two promotions and getting us back into EPL suggests he was worth it. A reasonable fraction of the increase in value of the club. Most Chairmen had the easier job of just presiding over a club in the EPL already.
In the sense that they are just part of entertainment, they are the same. To be brutally honest, if there was no football, I'd probably get over it reasonably quickly. My usual remedy to a disappointment is to get off my arse and go do something better. I'm the only person in my immedaite circle who follows football, so there would be no reminders of what was. Actually, it's quite peculiar. I'd be gutted if there was no Saints [as there nearly wasn't], but if the whole of football was to disappear I'd get over it fairly quickly, as mentioned above. There's a logic there somewhere, I'll just have to spend some time trying to find it.
Well, it puts food on his table and let's be honest how many jobs are essential services?! 2 million is a lot but probably far less than an average Premier League footballers earning.
I was just trying to illustrate how relatively unessential football is. If you read up the thread, instead of one or two in isolation you'll see how the comments are flowing.
Yes, therein lies the difference. It's that football would go on for some, but we'd have none. It would be torture for a long while. I remember the stories my eldest brother told me about feeling absolutely bereft when Southampton Speedway was folded and the Bannister Court stadium sold off for development. They had just become the Champions of England [basically won the Premier League], and then that was it. Gone. He was lost. Saints were a very big club in Speedway and had several of the biggest stars in the side.
Yeah. While I'm no fan of massive executive pay packets, I'm also not against the idea that a hugely successful one be paid roughly as much as his nominal employees.
These comments make me smirk a little. All of you who have said that he was worth it or the best, will never ever admit this, but if we didn't have Cortese on that list and it had been another club's CEO of a club our size at the top, people would be decrying how shocking it is. Cortese was great for our club, but I find it slightly alarming to see him top of the pay list for CEO's when you look at the company of clubs we are amongst. I do wonder if this was also part of the reason Katharina stepped in.
I'm with you here. With him leaving there are more than a few issues that have emerged indicating that things weren't quite as we saw from the outside. Transfers with huge owed payments when all sources seemed to indicate they were paid outright, his salary, lack of commercial development (I think DTLW likened that side of the club to Watford) and that his model for the club seems to have been completely dependent on us making the top 4 i.e. the boom or bust way that Leeds did it. I still think he did great by us, however a lot of his reign seems to have been dependent on controlling the message and concealing what was really happening inside. At least at first impression, the Kruger/Kat leadership seems a little more straightforward, realistic and honest.
Nicola was brought here by Markus. He was probably earning a very good salary before, so Markus had to meet that and more. Hardly surprising then that he was a top earner as he came from banking (not known for low pay and small bonuses!). As a private business, ML had every right to pay what he wanted to get the executive he wanted. Nicola acting alone achieved a lot (often the way with despots not hampered by democracy), but eventually came up against the problem resulting from such leadership...he got too stretched and suffered from not having to listen to other people's opinions or even be particularly nice. You can't be good at everything. Nicola supported the managers (until he sacked them ) and provided the ambition for the club...got us 2 promotions. He seems to have taken his eye off the commercial side...probably because he had continuing financial support from Markus and Katharina. The financial director leaving, but able to stay immediately when asked (suggesting that he had no job lined up) says a lot. So far things look promising, but we will have to wait and see how good the new regime is. However, it is obvious that things couldn't carry on as they were.
Personally, I'd argue no-one in the sport of football is worth £2 million a year. Also, I find it disgusting that only one Premier League club has committed to paying the living wage (don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's the same in League 2, football as a whole is messed up from top to bottom). While dicks like Rooney are on £300,000 a week, people working in the shops would have to work over 47,000 hours to earn what he makes in a week.
PL, that's a different discussion really and one you have to accept; you can't govern wage equality across different employment. My point was where Cortese sat within his peer group, relative to our club.
