£300,000 a week

It's obscene. I don't get it. Both City and United players drive past my house and cut me up on the road to their training ground in their bright yellow and red Ferraris and Lamborghinis, obviously bought out of a week's wages! All for kicking a ball!

Don't get me started.......

I nearly started a thread about the wrongness of this. But then I thought, why not? Football at the top is obviously a hugely successful business, so who should get the money made if not the players? No doubt there is loads left over for the fat and lazy directors.

And a lot of that money comes back to the State through tax.

Just ask the fans who have to pay through the nose for their tickets. And that doesn't include the cost of going to away matches.

My five year old twin grandsons are mad keen on Manchester City, with dad's encouragement. Tickets to matches and their football strip need a second mortgage. If they make so much, why not pass some back to those who attend their matches?

Rooney (and the other highly paid players) doesn't need that level of salary, no matter how short his career might be.

when you have used the same word that I use when this comes up - obscene.

Yes going to matches must be beyond the dreams of people on average wages. And rather a waste of the country's sporting talent with so many little boys equating sport with football. Bah, humbug.

My husband says that it has been held up for the time as there is some difficulty over his image!!!!!!!!!

Totally immoral in my opinion,accordinging to the airchair managers that I happen to know he is a load of rubbish anyway
Our boys can't afford to go to football matches now as it is far too expensive how can the average family afford that amount of money out of the family budget.
I'm sure you will find far more enjoyment watching the junior leagues on a Sunday at some of the local parks watching young boys and girls.

Too right there, glamma. My SiL is hoping my 2 year old twin grandaughters will take up Sunday League football. He's ready to start a new club just for them. I have a feeling he'll be waiting a long time

I recently watched a TV repeat on the work of Manchester Children's Hospital. The surgeons were amazing. I wonder how long they would have to work to earn £300.000.

It does seem out of proportion and a sad reflection of our society's values. however football is a form of entertainment and top stars: singing/film/TV celebs . etc also earn big money for not doing that much so if we are angry about football I am going to throw in other highly paid 'stars' from other walks of life and be angry about their out of proportion pay!

I do not begrudge anyone being rewarded for their talent and hard work..that is how it should be. But if there were not any highly paid stars my life would not be dramatically altered in any way (well DH might be home on match days!) but if some other 'workers' were not around I would miss them much more: bin men, sewer repair, train drivers, hospital workers etc etc etc.

Professional football is not a sport anymore but just a big money business.

It's completely ridiculous, and so unfair to people with far more valuable skills who are massively underpaid by comparison.
The world of football has become a sick joke these days. Sport????

jingl A lot less than you might think comes back to the state in taxes. The highly paid stars with even bigger earnings from merchandise are all incorporated (i.e. companies not individuals) and have complex accounting systems. It is quite possible that some of these companies are incorporated offshore so not taxable in the UK at all. Most top football clubs have massive debts – I think at one point Manchester United, which I believe was exceptionally successful at the time, had the highest level of debt. Debt is, apparently, endemic as a result of the vast sums they feel they have to pay to footballers because of global competition.

I'm not very interested in football [well, not at all actually] but did hear this today on the radio and thought that I had mis-heard it! As others have said ... obscene amount of money. As others have also said, why should going to watch a game cost so very much, and they change the 'strip' all the time, very costly for their fans.

I have no personal interest in football whatsoever - as far as I am concerned watching football is on par with watching paint dry (in fact the more I think about it, the more I think that the paint drying definitely has the edge). But I cannot bring myself to get worked up about the salaries paid to footballers (or any other sportsmen, come to that). What's happening here is a classic example of supply-and-demand economics. It is what it is - you can't legislate against it.

Replica football strips are expensive because people are prepared to pay the price asked. Stop buying them and prices will soon fall.

Footballers' wages are paid out of gate receipts and advertising revenue. If the supporters staged a national boycott for one week (or better yet an INTERnational boycott), then the entire financial structure of the sport would change.

People power is the answer!

Was it someone on here that told of a young relative of theirs asking for his autograph at and airport and was snubbed by him? [I think it was one of my racing forums]. Since then I resent every penny he's paid. I never felt that about Beckham or Alan Shearer. I'm afraid I like my football heroes to be of the Roy of the Rovers [or Stanley Bagshaw] variety. And they were paid 2/6 with free fish and chips on a Friday night thrown in....

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4CXY6TVBMc
..I know I've posted this before but it still makes me chuckle...

lefthanded you have said what I keep saying to my DH..it would only need a couple of weeks for the premier league football fans to stage an absence protest and things would start to change.

Also cut the season down to Sept-March! Rather than mid August -May!

A couple of weeks ago I was watching a Juventus match on TV. Because there had been trouble of some sort they had been banned from selling tickets to fans so they that invited all the local schoolchildren in for nothing. You've never seen such an excited and enthusiastic crowd! Heaven knows how many thousand euros they lost, but the kids had a wonderful time.

As most have said - obscene. The money rolling around within football has got well and truly out of hand. Most sport's professionals are paid monies which we normal people find hard to comprehend.

Though I agree that to be paid this sort of money is completely unjustifiable, I don't know why footballers are always singled out. Well known film stars, pop singers, etc. can earn enormous amounts of money (flying their own private jets, owning huge yachts, islands, etc.) but we seldom hear much criticism of them.

And, of course, those in the top financial jobs are paid crazy money for feathering their own nests and making a mess of the economy.

The whole system seems mad to me.

I too have wondered why footballers are singled out (there can be real hatred towards people like Rooney and Beckham).

Could it be because it offends some to see people from working class origins with none of the saving middle class graces having so much money to splash tastelessly around?