Gabby

[Ron Manager]

For what it is worth Bobby believes his career was stalled at the top level by Malcolm Alison whom he says was determined to sell him.

Bobby Shinton was a right winger.Big Mal obviously preffered Dave Bennet for that position

[dave.woodhall]

By "at his peak" Spink could have meant his best playing days, which would have been maybe mid-eighties.

[Sexual Ealing]

I was chatting to Paul Reaney (ex Leeds full back) last year, he was telling me that he and some of the players from the title winning side were hoping to hire venues to do Q&A sessions as several of them are struggling financially and not in great health. This is a man who played over 500 games for Leeds, winning the title and FA Cup and who George Best described as his toughest opponent and the best defender he faced.

The following day I saw that arrogant cock Danny Mills, who never won a thing as a player and played in the same position as Reaney but retired an incredibly wealthy man. I know they're different times and all that but like Agbonlahor, Mills wasn't fit to lace the boots of players from a previous era but have been rewarded excessively for their mediocrity.

In similar vein, I met Brendan Ormsby a few years' ago. Neither an international nor major trophy winner but a former England youth captain and briefly a bit of a potential star.
He'd just finished his post-delivery round and looked a little run down

I spoke to Spinky last night , hes a van driver now and absolutely loves it by the way

He was earning about £700 a week at his peak , I dont know how much that is in todays currency thou .

About £700 or 700 Euros.

In those days I was earning about £68 a week working at the DHSS. Worked out at just under £300 a month and my rent was £47 a month.

So Nigel Spink earned more than twice as much in a week as I did in a month. Now players earn more than twice as much in a week than most people do in a year.

That can't be right about Spink.  He played in the early 90s when I'd have thought even average players at Premier League clubs would have been on a few grand a week.  Even if he wasn't one of the highest paid stars, there's no way the most he earned was £35,000 a year.

I remember Alan Hansen saying somewhere that the most he ever earned was £2k pw at the end of his career. I can imagine the Liverpool captain being on more than double the Villa keeper.

[dave.woodhall]

Paul McGrath broke our wage structure on about £1,500 a week when he arrived and not long after Chris Woods was reckoned to be the highest-paid player in Britain on three grand.

[LeeS]

Paul McGrath broke our wage structure on about £1,500 a week when he arrived and not long after Chris Woods was reckoned to be the highest-paid player in Britain on three grand.

Back in those days a player could earn the salary equivalent to a top professional in other industries (doctor, accountant, lawyer etc). This would give them an executive lifestyle and put them in a nice (mock tudor) detached house with a new Ford Granada on the drive. These days they earn the same as top entertainers like movie stars and rock musicians and live in gaudy cribs with giant fish tanks and cinema rooms and drive around in customised Bentleys.

[robbo1874]

Paul McGrath broke our wage structure on about £1,500 a week when he arrived and not long after Chris Woods was reckoned to be the highest-paid player in Britain on three grand.

back then though, even early sky days, most of the players wages would be paid for by income to the club. I'm not suggesting Villa were relative paupers back then, possibly the opposite, but the wages would likely still be a fairly high percentage of club revenue I would guess?

[aj2k77]

http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2011/10/30/revealed-official-english-football-wage-figures-for-the-past-25-years-301002/

Would put Spink on I guess between £500 and £800 a week, which is what the poster said. Crazy that before the Premier League a 4th division footballer earned around 1/4 of a Premier League footballers wage, now it's probably around 2%

[Hookeysmith]

Cascarino stated in his book that he joined Villa on £75K a year - that is just over £1400 per week. In 1989 I bought my first house and earned £8K pa

[john e]

in fairness to the footballers earning mega millions they are in the biggest entertainment industry in the world,
 football is massive world wide it dominates peoples lives its probably what most people talk about in a social environment
there's a few hundred people  just on this site picking to bits everything that goes on in our club from the ticket office workers to the chairman,
 if we have a international weekend or a non football weekend life stops still, people get bored they don't know what to do, its that life dominating

i count myself in the same boat,
 football is massively important to me, i'l travel hundreds of miles to see utter shit then travel back moaning like fuck, i will drag my little 8 year old all over the country trying to instill 'the Villa' into him, my big lad had the same brainwashing
my misses just shakes her head at the ridiculousness of it all

if i start to talk to some stranger and they say they have no interest in football, i think there must be something wrong with him, he must have a very boring limited life, when in reality its probably me

i spend far to much money on football to really be able to realistically justify it, tickets, travel, shirts, sky, BT etc, why, because its what we want to do, its what makes the world go round for most of us
all that money goes somewhere and at the moment its going into the players pockets, they are taking advantage of the global phenomenon which is the game we love today

basically its our fault folks, if we stopped being interested in football and stopped spending so much on following it either on foot or on telly they wouldn't get earn so much

but some other section of society's entertainment industry would

[Chris Jameson]

if i start to talk to some stranger and they say they have no interest in football, i think there must be something wrong with him, he must have a very boring limited life, when in reality its probably me

Much as I like football I avoid talking about it at all costs with people. I get bored shitless when having to hold a conversation about football so can only imagine how tedious it must be for people with no interest whatsoever!

[old man villa fan]

in fairness to the footballers earning mega millions they are in the biggest entertainment industry in the world,
 football is massive world wide it dominates peoples lives its probably what most people talk about in a social environment
there's a few hundred people  just on this site picking to bits everything that goes on in our club from the ticket office workers to the chairman,
 if we have a international weekend or a non football weekend life stops still, people get bored they don't know what to do, its that life dominating

With the amount of money in football, especially in this country, more money should be permeating down through the levels of football.

[eamonn]

Funny post John, you're probably not far off the mark.  Anyone that's been on this forum for a decade or more has likely spent chunks of their daily lives discussing the most ridiculous of things.

I too, don't like talking about football much to folk in ''real life''. They're usually fans of gobshite teams and aren't funny or clever like us lot. They never get the validity of Spurs' wage-bill from 2007 to 2010 either.

[Exeter 77]

I remember when Kevin Keegan joined Newcastle in 1982 it was reported that he would be earning £3000 per week which made him the highest earning player in England at that point even though the Geordies were in Division 2. Graeme Souness was also quoted that when he left Liverpool in 1984 ( as captain of the league and European champions) he was on £100k per year.

[TopDeck113]

I think I've posted this before, but back in the day on my paper round I delivered the Daily Express to John Wile when he was captain of the Albion, i.e. a top flight footballer of what was then a club who had a handful of seasons when they qualified for Europe. Nice four bedroom detached but nothing more than any moderately successful middle manager would have lived in and his wife drove a fairly basic late 70s Austin Mini.  I don't know what he earned, but I guess the family budget was pretty tight as he never gave me a Christmas tip.

[KevinGage]

I think I've posted this before, but back in the day on my paper round I delivered the Daily Express to John Wile when he was captain of the Albion, i.e. a top flight footballer of what was then a club who had a handful of seasons when they qualified for Europe. Nice four bedroom detached but nothing more than any moderately successful middle manager would have lived in and his wife drove a fairly basic late 70s Austin Mini.  I don't know what he earned, but I guess the family budget was pretty tight as he never gave me a Christmas tip.

Either that, or he was just a dour Olbiyun knobhead.