Fran, I wonder what Cortese's salary/earnings were in 2009/10 compared to his finishing salary. Anyone know? Again I will say how I believe he has played a huge part in our success and something that probably wouldn't have happened without him or his vision, however I was surprised at the standings in that article.
True. I'd like to think as a 'community club' we're slightly more generous with our wages, within the financial constraints that we are in. That's probably very naive though.
The first six months he earned £600k (so £1.2m a year): sauce. Guess you can draw a roughly upwards trend from that to the £2m ish at the end.
Also add in that Saints were paying 1 x CEO that amount of money whereas most of the other clubs (that are paying CEOs less) are paying several other people as well that we weren't. We shouldn't really say Cortese was worth it because of what he achieved because you could equally say that CEOs of clubs that win cups, trophies entry into European competitions deserve it and then Cortese should be down the list. What we should be asking is how Cortese's package compares to other clubs 'boards' that were doing what Cortese was on his own. TBH it's up to the owners of each club to pay what they want to whoever as long as they aren't risking the club itself and if he had been paid a much lower salary then his bonuses would have been much much bigger. He turned Southampton Football Clubs value from £20-30m into a £150m+ business within 4 years. How many people in the world can say that he hasn't earned a 1.5% share of the 'profit'. And yes Saints are easily worth £150m or so now. I would venture that any club that looks like they are in the Prem for the long haul can value itself well over the £100m mark these days especially with the new TV deal and player values as they are. If the Saints Squad were asset stripped at the moment and sold off it would make in the region of £150m - £200m on it's own with Lallana, Shaw,Lovren and Schneiderlin alone bringing in something in the region of £100m. So whilst something was obviously wrong and had to change I don't think we can really bemoan the money he was paid. What he did for the Liebherrs was worth what he was paid.
