Wages, wages, wages....

[Villa'Zawg]

It's not, apparently footballers are actually paid PAYE.

It kind of seems wrong. A payslip like you or I would get, except with pretax pay of 250,000 on it. Mind boggling.

Eh?  Whatever a footballer earns, they'll pay tax and NI on it.  There are clever ways of avoiding a certain amount of tax and NI, but they don't get paid PAYE.  I'm not sure what you mean by that.

That's what I mean - they pay tax and NI on it.

I was just using the term PAYE to mean they're employees and subject to tax and NI, and not - as some would suggest - getting their salaries paid into holding companies in tax havens.

I read an article by Max Clifford recently, saying Gareth Bale would earn £10-£20m in image rights (paid into a limited co) on top of his wages.

[Dave]

I'd be interested to hear how that would affect their overall wage bill.

[fredm]

Talking of wages, just heard a bit on 5 Live and they were saying that Levy has a strict £70k top limit at Spurs due to the limited income of 36000 capacity.  That is why Harry cannot bring in the really top class players as they won't go there for that - Gervinho was mentioned as having gone to the Gunners due to Levy refusing to pay him more.

Also has anyone seen the list of players that was in a newspaper recently where they have been released and have not yet got a club - Hitz and Upson were two that I remember but I think the figure was over 200! (probably wrong though).

[dave.woodhall]

Talking of wages, just heard a bit on 5 Live and they were saying that Levy has a strict £70k top limit at Spurs due to the limited income of 36000 capacity.  That is why Harry cannot bring in the really top class players as they won't go there for that - Gervinho was mentioned as having gone to the Gunners due to Levy refusing to pay him more.

Also has anyone seen the list of players that was in a newspaper recently where they have been released and have not yet got a club - Hitz and Upson were two that I remember but I think the figure was over 200! (probably wrong though).

It was something like that but it did say that most frees wait until after the end of July to sign for a new club so as to get an extra month's pay from their old one.

[Dante Lavelli]

£70k should be more than enough for a club of Spurs and Villa's stature.
Anything more and you're going to have a seriously lopsided distribution if wages amongst the squad.