Forget About The Price Tag

"When I heard Johnathon (Barnett) repeat the figure of £55k, I nearly swerved off the road"     Ashley Cole.

This is the quite frankly ludicrous quote from our friend 'Cashley' Cole's autobiography which really hammers home just how out of touch with the common man todays footballers are. The book was published in 2006. fast-forward 5 years to today, and we hear from Cristiano Ronaldo that, should Manchester City want his services, he would DEMAND £400,00 per week to play fottball for a couple of hours. This would of course be on top of his reputed £150 million price tag!!

Where the hell does he get off rating himself that highly? How can the gelled tumbler, the portuguese winker, or, my personal favourite, that absolute w***er who cost us the world cup, value his ability to kick a ball for 90 minutes a week at this extortionate amount?

Lets put this in to some sort of perspective. Arsenal have a wage cap (if we can call it that) of £90,000 per player per week. A very solid structure that, although restricts the players we bring in, has left us in an incredibly stable financial position. Lets go further. In the Premier league season just gone, Blackpools highest payed player earned "only" £10,000 per week. And he (Charlie Adam) looked world class almost week in, week out.

So what could be bought for the equivalent of one weeks Ronaldo? £400,000 =

• 16 nurses fully paid for a year
• 16 teachers for a year
• 20 infantry soldiers fighting for a year
• 14 police officers on the beat for a year
• 18 firefighters for a year

There are very few things that genuinely anger me. However the obscene amounts of money that footballers these days demand in return for minimal work is most definitely one of them. I think everyone would agree that the occupations that I have listed deserve the sort of financial input that football has. Maybe rather than buying up all of our clubs, A rich sheikh might like to buy a hospital and plough his money in there. Sadly, I doubt this will ever happen.