It's just been announced that Wayne Rooney has agreed a deal with Manchester United that will pay him £300,000 per week for the next 5 years.
Is Manchester United getting a good deal out of this record contract or does it show intent to quell unrest amongst the red fans of Manchester (and Surrey... )?
To me it's a simple yet expensive PR exercise by the club to highlight to players around the world that they pay well even though they've lost some of the allure since Ferguson retired.
I think Man U might be paying the price for their poor form this season. If you can't guarantee Champions League then you have to pay over the odds for players
He's a world class player in my view. When on form he can be the heart of a team which is challenging for domestic and European silverware.
However, he isn't worth £300k a week. I'm sure Messi and Ronaldo are on that sort of wage, and top players like Ozil will be on much less. It is about keeping a top player but it's also a PR exercise as well.
If Moyes sorts Man Utd out they could be a serious force again eventually. A front 3 of Mata, Van Persie and Rooney is one of the best attack forces in the world when on form. They just need a world class centre mid and CB now Vidic is off.
Surely any player that thinks they are as good or better than Rooney are going to ask for an equally extraordinary over-the-top wage. It seems like a financially worrying PR move to me.
“I just got an erection. Oh, fear not. It’s nothing to do with your state of undress. I just simply need to urinate.”
Dr. Walter Bishop
This is where football is becoming pointless. People go on about us having no ambition but seriously, is paying Wayne Rooney £300,000 a week, ambition?
Every fan paying at the turnstiles at old trafford and I mean EVERY FAN, are paying £4 each week just to cater for Rooney alone. It's sickening to the point of wondering whether it's worth carrying on being a football fan at all for the fans of those clubs. At least half of the fans in that ground only see large ants running about.
It's got to the sickening stage now. Rooney is getting older not younger. Has he caught Ferguson hanging out of some of the players in the showers at any time? Has he got some dirt on the owners of Man utd or what?
Honest man, it's getting beyond stupid, all this.It sends out the wrong message to any footballer wanting to ply his trade in our league, because they will look at Rooneys wage and immediately start thinking on those lines. At least those who's talents are sought after by Man utd.
They are making a massive rod for their own backs and it will cause a domino effect for other clubs players who will start the old, "pay me more or I'm off" routine.
I'd rather go the way we are going and paying a fair price and not being blackmailed, than for us to give in to players that demand stupid money for no more return than what they were giving already.
If I owned Man utd and Rooney said he was off unless his wages were improved, I'd have sold him on the spot and brought in someone who wants to play for a decent wage, even if they turned out to be not as good.
These bastards are in a lucky position of being paid handsomely even at £10,000 a week for what they do. Most footballers go to work and play at weekends or on the night for expenses at best and in most cases, not even that.
If the wages get upped, then the ticket prices get upped, then the working class cannot afford to go, which leaves the prawn sandwich brigade to turn the game into a farce. It's close to being poncified now. In time, stadiums will only be there for people to go and watch a big screen of Fifa animated effigies running about, operated by two people on an xbox or something stupid like that.
I'll tell you something. It's not the way to run a football club. It's not sustainable unless you can guarantee trophies. Man utd cannot guarantee that now. Not with the competition they are up against.
This madness has got to stop. Let's get back to grass roots football and bring through the local talent with a small mix of foreign like years ago, because the game is being destroyed from under our noses, piece by piece and is becoming more corrupt by the day, in my honest opinion.
ALF wrote:Wayne Rooney is an absolute w*****, having the cheek to ask for £300k a week is disgusting.
Sarcasm?
I say fair play to his agent for getting a ridiculously good deal. At the end of the day, Man Utd didn't have to offer/accept it.
Not at all. It's ridiculously greedy. He's probably already their best paid player at about £200k a week, to ask for a 50% pay rise on top of that, when he's a few years older and already not as good as he was a couple of years ago, is disgraceful. He knows Man United can't afford to lose him and will pay him anything, so he takes advantage of that and asks for stupid money. If I was Roy Hodgson I wouldn't take him to the World Cup, this contract shows he's in football for all the wrong reasons.
I say fair play to his agent for getting a ridiculously good deal. At the end of the day, Man Utd didn't have to offer/accept it.
Not at all. It's ridiculously greedy. He's probably already their best paid player at about £200k a week, to ask for a 50% pay rise on top of that, when he's a few years older and already not as good as he was a couple of years ago, is disgraceful. He knows Man United can't afford to lose him and will pay him anything, so he takes advantage of that and asks for stupid money. If I was Roy Hodgson I wouldn't take him to the World Cup, this contract shows he's in football for all the wrong reasons.
Its Man Utd who are in the wrong not Rooney. Near enough everyone would accept a 50% pay rise and you'd have to be mental not to. Even if you are on £18k a year already or £200k a week already. At the end of the day you are going to accept the highest wage you can possibly get for doing your job.
Rooney doesn't deserve £300k per week, but that's what he and his agents have got out of his employer (he is just an employee working for a company at the end of the day). We'd all push for a big pay rise if we could get away with it. As other have said, it sets another dangerous precedent with regards to what the numerous better players than Rooney will now ask for, putting the footballer even further out of touch with average fans and making football even more unaffordable as ticket prices etc. will rise to cushion the added cost to the club.
£300k per week is obscene - for that money you'd want someone that delivers every single game without fail. Only 2 players on the planet can do that (when they're fully fit). Rooney isn't in that league. On his day he's world class but his day doesn't come round that regularly. Certainly not often enough to justify that kind of money.
I'm the scumbag outlaw. You're the pillar of justice. Neither of us like looking at ourselves in the mirror. Do we have a deal?
As pointed out elsewhere, if I was offered 300k a week to do something I enjoy I'd bloody take it. This is the club who have gone cuckoo. Have a feeling they'll be feeling this for a few years to come.
Ridiculous move from Man Utd, obviously panicking over their season, he only has another year or two left in him of top football. I'd have taken Chelsea's offer when they were in for him.
Rooney has just opened up a huge can of worms. Does anyone think that Van Persie will now play the same game? Most of the talent at Man utd are going to jump right on this and what can Man utd say?
They've set a very dangerous precendent which absolutely reeks of panic. They have a manager that is totally wrong for the job. They have players that are ageing and most will be worthless very soon.
They are trying to keep up with the rich billionaires and are going to fail spectacularly by doing it like this. I'm over the moon though because they deserve it.
You are now witnessing the new Manchester united, the equivalent of the old Newcastle united that will bring in players and pay players top rank money, who will then give much much less than they're worth.
We used to do that on a smaller scale of the time by offering silly money to players like Luque and wages to players that were past their sell by date, as in Owen and look where that got us.
The Glazers aren't oil rich billionaires with money to burn. They're chancers and borrowers who happened to buy into a club that was very well established with a top manager in Ferguson.
They do not have any of that now and they will suffer for it.
Paying nearly 40 million for Mata and then this crap with Rooney, plus more to come. They are walking a very very thin tight rope. As Anderson said, ' many players don't want to be there.' Is he just a sulk or is he telling the truth?
I'd say he is possibly telling the truth and it will be made worse by this Rooney carry on, because, remember! Most players have seen this Rooney carry on before when Ferguson gave in and upped his money and the fans went ballistic. I wonder what they will do if Rooney doesn't perform.
The love of the club? Bollox! There's no love for the club. It's a club where players went to because they saw it as their best chance for a trophy, plus big bank balance. Is it the players fault? Well not all of it. It's the clubs fault for being so stupid as to allow agents to dictate the proceedings and then give in to them.
I'll never forget the words of Warren Barton just before he signed for us back in the Keegan days. He was asked if he'd negotiated his contract and he said, " nope! I just said to the board, I'm sure you'll be fair, so I just left it up to them."
That's the type of footballer I want at Newcastle. I don't want a footballer who decides he's playing well and wants more money, or he's off.
Personally, I'd have binned Rooney the first time around when he pulled this stroke.
Fair enough, he's grabbing what he can, people might say. That's fine if he's on £10,000 a week and thinks he's worth more...but not on £200,000 a week, frigging hell man.
If he takes a hissy fit from now on and Man utd decide to sell him...who's going to buy him at his age and wage? Man city? PSG? or some Anzhi type outfit for the fun of it?
I'm willing to bet that this tears the dressing room right up at Man utd. They're going to need a massive overhaul next year and it won't be cheap in transfer outlay nor will it be cheap in wage offerings. Rooney has seen to that.
This could the the fall of Man utd, seriously. The straw that broke the camels' back.
I know what people will be thinking. It will be, ' nah, wolfy, you're reading too much into it, Man utd are a massive club and they will sustain this.' and fair enough, they COULD. It's just one hell of a gamble they're playing, just to get one player to commit his future. A player that I personally think has about 2 good years left in him before he starts going into decline. Then after that, I believe he will be no more influential than Rio is for them, now.
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