Wages

This is a subject which I'm sure is close to many people's hearts. Now before I write anymore about this I want to make it perfectly clear that I, as most people would, want to get as much money as I can for the job I do. Although money doesn't bring you happiness (allegedly!!)it certainly makes life a little easier when you have enough of it. And there it is, the key word...'Enough'. What is enough? Are some people worthy of getting paid more than others? I certainly think that there are, if you take Soldiers, emergency services and many other people who either risk their lives or provide an essential service. These are the sort of people who deserve to get paid more than everyone else. It makes me angry.., actually it makes me sad, that you have nurses who have to struggle financially when you then have a sportsman earning more than 5 times in a week that they would earn in a year.

And this is why I am having a rant about this. I was reading an article on the Internet in which the chairman of Reading FC said that the wages of players were "obscene in the extreme". It will come as no surprise to you that I totally agree with him. The question is what do we, or more importantly can we do about it? As expected this article attracted lots of comments the majority of which were in agreement with him. However the solutions that they all gave differed wildly.

The most popular solution was to put a cap on the wages but how this was to be done was also a source for disagreement. It was also pointed out that even if the wages were capped there was no way of ensure that these savings would be passed onto the fans of the sport. Let's face it football is no longer a sport, it is run as a business and if the 'companies' can make a bit of extra money they will.

I have my own thoughts of how the issue of players wages should be resolved and I'm sure that there will be people who will disagree with me. You never know though some might also agree with what I'm going to say.

My proposal has several steps to it and at first viewing may seem complicated, I apologise for this.

TV Money - There is no questions that this brings a massive amount of revenue into football. The problem is that the 'Big clubs' pounce on this money and share it out amongst themselves with nothing left for the rest of football. Solution: All TV money is paid to the FA, after all it is them who governs the game. The FA would then have the responsibility of dividing this up in a more appropriate way. Say 40% to be allocated to 'Grass roots' football, towards better facilities / support for English football. The next 30% could be divided equally between the Championship, League 1 & 2, this would then be further split equally between the teams in these leagues. Another 20% could be shared amongst the teams in the Premiership, as much as I hate to admit it these boys are the ones who bring in most of the money. What about the remaining 10%? Well that's easy this can be put aside to form an emergency fund for clubs that are in serious financial difficulty or having some other kind of problem.

Gate Money - This is where serious changes can be made to benefit the fans. Place a cap on ticket prices, it sounds simple doesn't it? The beauty of it is that by capping the ticket prices the clubs will be forced into lowering their expenditure, including player wages.

Player / Manager Wages - A cap on the players / managers wages still needs to be imposed otherwise clubs who have rich backers would still be able to pay high wages even though they are getting less revenue from the gates. The cap on the players wages could be in 3/4 tiers and be linked to the time he has spent at the club. This would encourage players to only move clubs for footballing reasons and not financial.

£20,000.00 / week - up to 2 years
£30,000.00 / week - +2 years
£40,000.00 / week - +4 years
£60,000.00 / week - over 5 years

I think that a similar structure could be imposed on managers as you now have some managers who are earning just as much as the players these days.

Merchandise - This is another big source of revenue for clubs and also where some clubs take the p*** on their prices. Whilst it would be difficult to put a cap on prices something does need to be done to ensure that they don't get silly. There is an argument that it is because of the players that the shirts are sold and I do agree with this. Therefore why not allow the players to get a % of shirts sold with there name / number on. This would therefore provide them with extra income linked directly with their popularity due to how they are performing.

Now this is all very well but it would have to be brought in worldwide because otherwise all the players would move over to whichever country would pay their stupid wages. Whilst this does seem initially to be a negative i think it can easily be made positive.

Look at the state of our international team and then compare it to some where like Italy or Germany. In comparison those countries have a much higher percentage of home grown talent, where as the Premiership has something like 30% English players. So if all the foreigners and the so called 'Big players' within the current England team go else where then all of the clubs will only have home grown talent left. This will have a positive effect on the England team as these players will improve now that they get to play more regular football.

So there you go, it's easy. All we have to do is completely change the way football is run!!!

Welcome

I have just spent the last 20 minutes setting up my profile, writing my 'About Me' section, choosing the layout of my blog and all the other stuff I had to do before I could actually post something. I must confess that now that I have waded through all of this I'm not entirely sure of what I am going to right about.

I first stumbled across this site when a friend had a link to his blog on his facebook page. At this point I must highly recommend giving his blog a read (http://geoff-the-idiot.blogspot.com/), after reading the first couple of posts on his blog I was completely hooked. Over the last few months I have found them to be a great source of humour, of thought prevoking tales and of just a way of keeping in touch with an old friend. Over the last few weeks the enjoyment I have experienced by reading his blogs has been replaced by something else, something new to me. I have been inspired, inspired to write my own blog. Now I don't know how long this will last, whether it will be a flash in the pan or whether I will still be sat here in my 40s tapping away on the keys of my laptop. I've never been into writing down my thoughts or anything else for that matter so this really will be interesting, for me anyway, as to how long this will continue to get update.