Alan McCafu

[silhillvilla]

Blame mcleish for signing these two players and giving them ridiculous money. Fucking idiot .

[LeeB]

Blame mcleish for signing these two players and giving them ridiculous money. Fucking idiot .

Amen.

[OCD]

I am pretty sure if he handed in a transfer request he could have got a move last summer. But he didnt because he doesnt believe in himself enough to take a pay cut and prove himself at a new club.

He is probably frozen out because of appearance fees or some such in his contract.

Hutton is just acting the same way Shay Given is, I find it a bit annoying Hutton gets abuse but Shay doesnt.

I've not seen newspaper articles where Given is moaning about a lack of first team football despite turning down opportunities in the summer.

What's wrong with that?

Nothing. The point is that I have seen Hutton quotes where he moans about not getting first team football. Given's been nothing but a total professional and doesn't deserve the label of 'parasite'. It's a harsh tag on Hutton too but I don't see how one minute he can turn down a move to somewhere where he would get first team football and then moan to the media about a lack of first team opportunities. Basically he had a choice - regular football or money. He chose money, which is fair enough but he shouldn't then moan about regular football having turned that down. 

Someone else in the same position (and Given has done just this) would take a pay cut to get regular football. In my mind that's the sensible thing to do because they can rebuild their career and potentially get a move in future where they will be back on good pay but getting regular football again.

It's also worth noting that had he joined Mallorca, he would have still been on best part of a million a year. It's not like he would have been slumming it.

[DrGonzo]

You can tell it's the international break, can't you?  We've resorted to discussing Alex "Gds save us" McClueless and Alan "chopper" Hutton.  Bring on the Baggies!

[eastie]

You can tell it's the international break, can't you?  We've resorted to discussing Alex "Gds save us" McClueless and Alan "chopper" Hutton.  Bring on the Baggies!

Was thinking  similar - quietest couple of days I've known on here in a long time - depressing

[Salsa Party Animal]

We can't cut players like NFL teams as contract have to be honoured. But you can't blame the players who sign the contract as long they give it all on training ground and behave themselves.

[edgysatsuma89]

I love the villa, but offer me 30k plus a week to do fuck all and I'll take it. Depends what you want.

Given has retired from the international game, so doesn't need to prove himself. Hutton gets played at RB regardless because Scotland are shit, so no need to prove himself. Chill out on 3 times the wage at their age? Will do.

[Ron Manager]

Gentlemen you may have observed in this mornings rags that Mr Roberto De Matteo (the noted manager) is trousering something like £130,000 a week from Chelsea for doing nothing. At least Hutton and Given are training as per their contract!

[OCD]

We can't cut players like NFL teams as contract have to be honoured. But you can't blame the players who sign the contract as long they give it all on training ground and behave themselves.

I imagine the Miami Dolphins are wishing they could cut Richie Incognito right now.

[DrGonzo]

Gentlemen. You may have observed in this mornings rags that Mr Roberto De Matteo (the noted manager) is trousering something like £130,000 a week from Chelsea for doing nothing. At least Hutton and Given are training as per their contract!

Well who broke that contract?  Did Di Matteo walk out on Chelski??  Not sure of the validity of that.

[Toronto Villa]

We can't cut players like NFL teams as contract have to be honoured. But you can't blame the players who sign the contract as long they give it all on training ground and behave themselves.

I imagine the Miami Dolphins are wishing they could cut Richie Incognito right now.

They can if they want. They'll have paid him his signing bonus and they'll still be hit under the cap for the value of the contract. But they can release him without any further repercussion under collective bargaining agreement. We could do the same with Hutton just that we'd still be paying for his wages.

[TheSandman]

It's also worth noting that had he joined Mallorca, he would have still been on best part of a million a year. It's not like he would have been slumming it.

Really? I'd eat my hat if players in the Spanish Second Division got that much money. Half that at best, more likely a quarter. Luna probably gets around a million per year from us which would most likely be a rise on what he got from Mallorca when they were still in the top division. So he'd be looking at going from £1.5-2million per year to over a million less.

What some revisionists forget is that we also turned down moves for him, hence his unhappiness at not playing. He gets damned for turning down one move early on in the summer when he thinks he might get a better opportunity (and that's if the move wasn't paper talk) whereas the club turned down three approaches on deadline day.

[olaftab]

Blame mcleish for signing these two players and giving them ridiculous money. Fucking idiot .

Our default position.

[pauliewalnuts]

I am pretty sure if he handed in a transfer request he could have got a move last summer. But he didnt because he doesnt believe in himself enough to take a pay cut and prove himself at a new club.

He is probably frozen out because of appearance fees or some such in his contract.

Hutton is just acting the same way Shay Given is, I find it a bit annoying Hutton gets abuse but Shay doesnt.

I've not seen newspaper articles where Given is moaning about a lack of first team football despite turning down opportunities in the summer.

What's wrong with that?

Nothing. The point is that I have seen Hutton quotes where he moans about not getting first team football. Given's been nothing but a total professional and doesn't deserve the label of 'parasite'. It's a harsh tag on Hutton too but I don't see how one minute he can turn down a move to somewhere where he would get first team football and then moan to the media about a lack of first team opportunities. Basically he had a choice - regular football or money. He chose money, which is fair enough but he shouldn't then moan about regular football having turned that down. 

Someone else in the same position (and Given has done just this) would take a pay cut to get regular football. In my mind that's the sensible thing to do because they can rebuild their career and potentially get a move in future where they will be back on good pay but getting regular football again.

It's also worth noting that had he joined Mallorca, he would have still been on best part of a million a year. It's not like he would have been slumming it.

You're basing all that on things we don't know. We don't know who made offers, we don't know how much they offered, we don't know how much of a pay cut it would have meant for Hutton, we also don't know if the loan fell through because we wanted too high a loan fee.

I don't see how anyone can decide from a situation like that that Hutton chose money over football.

And how come Given escapes such harsh treatment? He might have talked about taking a pay cut to get football, but he's still here, too, so when it came down to it, he stayed. Why don't the same assumptions that were made about Hutton in damning him get made about Given, too?

People forget, it's not just a case of "Hey, Shay (or Alan), Club X have offered to take you, but they're going to pay you 10k a week instead of 50k". It's also a case of a loan fee, of other fees which will be due to the player and his agent, no doubt, lots of things will have to be sorted out, and they're not all in the control of the player.

If anyone is to blame for this situation, it is the club, and specifically the people at the club who doled out such lavish contracts in the first place. It's all well and good blaming players for being money-grabbers and what not, but we have a legal, contractual obligation to pay them that money. We shouldn't have told a 37 year old keeper we'd pay him 65k a week until he was 42 in the first place, then we wouldn't have this problem.

[peter w]

Why is it our bomb squad can't engineer moves whilst on international duty?