The Arsenal Society VIII

John O'Shea earns 80k? Jesus Christ

Bendy et al on 50k a week doesn't really surprise me. My manager met Steven Thompson last year when down south. He was on 30k a year at Burnley, and he's only a squad player. Premiership is just silly wages.

It's not for his ability (which is underrated) but for the loyalty he has shown to the club (just gets on with it, never complains, etc) and perhaps to send a message to the younger players that if you're loyal...you'll earn as much as JOS.

If Bendtner really is on 50k, that needs to be looked at. We're probably generous with Chamakh because it was on a free. Bendtner, Diaby, Denilson, Almunia, Vela, Chamakh, Eboue all should be around 30k or under...if they wanna **** off, it's no biggie. Certain promising players like Gibbs, Ramsey, Wilshere could be paid a bit more than that, but we shouldn't be handing out generous contracts to players who haven't proved themselves. 100k for Nasri sounds absurd -- he has had a good 6 months...big ****in' deal -- he needs to do it for a couple of seasons to get the star status salary of 6 figures a week.

Damn, these figures. How does it feel knowing that they get paid more in a week than the maximum you'll ever get paid in a year?

It annoys me. Not so much in a jealousy way, but more in a 'being expected to pay for their wages' way. Ticket prices are daft. Looking at attendances there's obviously still a market for them atm, but most of the time i'm not willing to be part of that market. I can understand many of the reasons for it if not agree with it. Obviously there are other factors out of the supporter's control driving them up, but still.

What's worse for me is when you see the figures lower league clubs are going out of business on. Fractions of Premier League's players monthly or even weekly wages. These clubs have thousands of fans who have their club snatched away from them. I'd like to see some kind of redistribution of wealth, though wouldn't know how to go about it.

Completely agree. Well almost; because I'm understanding how hard I'm going to have to work and how my pay won't be that great in the future, jealousy is starting to creep in now. I sometimes wonder what PL footballers think about "normal" people; they probably look at people working 9-5 (or more), in jobs they probably hate or at least aren't passionate about, getting paid literally 1/100 of what they get, being insignificant, not living life to the full; they probably wonder how people can live like that and then piss themselves laughing to sleep on their £10,000 golden bed in their penthouse suite next to two models. Pricks.

What a bitter **** I have become. I'd still make time to watch them though.

Unfortunately the club has to pay ridiculous wages to stop people leaving. If we pay players like Nasri less than £100k he'll bugger off to Chelsea or Man City. That's the problem with football these days, there's no loyalty anymore.
As for ticket prices, Arsenal's are ridiculously high. I'm hoping that they're reassessed when we've paid off the stadium debt as I can currently only afford to see one or two games a season.