The Daily Star have run a story that says Ron Vlaar has demanded that the club double his current wages of twenty five thousand pounds a week to fifty thousand.
While these are eye-watering figures to anybody in the real world, we all know they’re not when it comes to planet EPL.
So the simple question is would he be worth it to us?
While £50k a week is quite simply obscene, you could actually argue that he’s worth it, in my opinion.
Crazy? Well, not really. Think about it for a minute.
He signed a three year contract originally, I believe, so if he signed another three year contract at £50k a week, that would be six years service at an average £37.5k a week. Not to shabby, for our best defender, captain and one of the major players in our squad.
In fact it’s frankly pretty inexpensive in the scheme of things.
Being realistic, Vlaar will want at least a four year contract, as it will probably be his last big payday. You can’t really blame him, can you?
The club agreeing to that would then mean that the average rises to £39k odd a week. Still reasonable, I’d suggest, for a defender was one of the best in the World cup and someone who is supposedly courted by Man united and Southampton, amongst others.
But then there’s the downside.
Vlaar seems to be incredibly injury-prone and his injuries are mostly not trivial, meaning he has to spend weeks out.
You could even question if it’s the case that he doesn’t like playing in the cold, I suppose.
All of which of course now brings his average effective wages into a different realm.
We all know what the club’s stance has been over the last few years, where we wanted to pay buttons for players as part of the cost cutting.
But Randy seems to have had a slight change of heart lately.
Which means that it’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out.
We have three options, don’t we?
Sell him for what we can get in the winter window, let him go for nothing in the summer window, or pay him the money.
I don’t think either of the first two options will happen, but I don’t think we’ll offer him four years either.
My money says we’ll offer him three years at even higher money. I mean, will we really want a defender who’s already injury-prone, at the age of thirty three plus?
That said, he’s currently a very important cog in the Villa wheel.
Which makes it a tricky decision.
I do think it’ll be either the first or third option, third clearly being the main option, although if third fails, second should be the main object. Is 4m really going to do much for Villa? I do think Lerner would spend but getting a CB as good as him in January would be a struggle. Can think of a couple, like Lombaerts and Paletta, but it’s about keeping a stable back 4. A Hutton-Vlaar-Baker/Senderos-Cissokho needs to be kept at least until the summer.
This is football today,owners know at some stage agent will push for more when its obvious a need arises , me give it but should a player fail to not give full playing time,, wages cut to half, sounds silly I know, but we in the past have paid players to sit on that bench, even now you can count certain players injured and what good are they to a team.unfortunately we need him, its a tough call for the club.
50k is not unrealistic at all. In fact it shows what a great deal we got. If this is what is holding both Delph and Vlaar signibg back they should both be signed up immediately without further delay. It really does defie belief that two key players have been allowed to run their contracts down to almost six months.
Well said. Any half decent player at AVFC will fairly ask for the going rate. I know what I’d do…!
If he doesn’t get what he’s asking it’s pretty safe bet he’ll be gone come Jan, it’s his last big pay day and all honesty who could blame him? If not for the money what else is there to stay at AVFC for? The club has no ambition other than Premiership survival so little chance of filling his trophy cabinet medals and gongs and the piece de resistance – the football’s he’s asked to play is on the whole is absolute shite.
50k a week his he worth it? In today’s football that’s hardly big bucks so even considering his injury record it seems not to big an ask but if I where in his shoes and Man U / Arsenal came a knocking I’d be off like a flash given the present climate at Villa Park.
Agree with you completely BWS. The thing is it’s been true for a long while, and not just for Villa. The Spurs model seems best for a team with CL ambitions if not the ability to deliver it consistently. They buy young talent and decent overseas players, and accept that they will lose their best players (Berbatov, Modric, Bale) but get good money for them and reinvest it. I think continual firing of managers has probably ruined them.
Villa is just a basket case in comparison.
You’d think Lerner would take a leaf out of Levy’s book and use his Spuds as a model. They sign some top players, are always in the right half the table and play some half decent football and at the same time turn a profit whilst managing not to fall foul of UEFA’s fair play rules. On top of that they have 47000 on the waiting list for season tickets (that’s got to tell you something).
It beggars belief just how do they get it so right and us so wrong. .
Shouldn’t we give our new CEO sometime to turn the fortunes around at the VILLA before saying we’re a lost cause in comparison to other clubs.without that fat twat we stand more of a fighting chance now.
Very true Giddy perhaps with the Fox in the directors box it will start to turn round but we have been a rudderless ship close to drifting into the abyss for the past few years.
I think we all live in hope mate.
He might just go in January but what will they be investing in???? Certainly someone with a dodgy calf & also a slow healer possibly 2 months sidelined per injury.certainly as ability goes he’s an asset to the team especially over recent seasons.I’d love him to stay but the lure of money & silverware will be too tempting imo.
point not mentioned is that yes he is injury prone, but this will very likely get worse with age?
a four year deal would be way too long?
It’s a risk for manyoo too
Plus at manyyo if he is out for a while with injury he is more likely to lose his place more or less permanently and end up rotting in the reserves?
tough one.
coz he’s o good player
he wants one last pay day – but does his injury record – which must surely get worse with age – preclude this?
could drag on this one! ?
ps
plus when the f*$k is Joe Cole going to get a run out ?????????
well the international bore finally over, back to the real deal of premiership, i don’t think vlaar not signing new contract would mean hes off. basically he free 2 negotiate with other clubs but this does depend on teams like man utd desperation, if they come in with big offers or not
its worrying that their seems 2be no urgency, delph and vlaar have made comments regarding their futures both claiming to be happy to sign with us further, but lack of movement is alarming. if i was a betting man 🙂 i would say one will not sign 🙁 which one will stay ?? i think vlaar will sign extension, delph will have his head turned elsewhere, he’ll be off in the summer
We won’t know until we hear the official words from club and players, until then, we should assume it is all rumours as it is easy kindle to start a fire
I do believe that we will extend his contract and offer a higher wage, but I have no faith in words printed by the star. They seem to just fuel a fire and spout out what ever will get them clicks and sales.
Most likely event is that his wage increases to 35-40k a week. I don’t care how big the world thinks Vlaar is, unless we are going to be pushing big money into transfers and keep this a consistent thing, Vlaar should be no exception.
Truth be told, I could never have a level headed conversation about this kind of topic as football wages wind me up already. 25k demanding double the salary! Live in the real world and not in the Sky.
I agree Mr cheese the wages paid out in today’s game is exorbitant to say the least,they have a SHITE game they still pick up what their contracted to & just to add insult to injury their paid bonuses what a Fucking joke like you say try living in the real world for a while.
True Giddy but… We want our team to compete. The only way to do that is to build a team/squad of talented players. To have that we need to pay them big wages. Great players get exorbitant wages, good players get really good wages, average players earn way more than most people and even useless ones make a living that would make most people dance with joy.
At the same time we resent what they get paid. Bit of a paradox really.
Going back to the young and hungry experiment. It was right in a way, but the problem is when Tottenham buy young/hungry they buy Bale, just as Arsenal buy Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain etc. If you want the best you have to pay top dollar otherwise it’s just a fluke if you uncover a real talent.
MON got it wrong most of the time when he paid top dollar(young/Downing/Milner apart). Lambert seems to have done pretty well when he has. Too much money wasted along the way because we didn’t have the right manager when we had the cash. Great pity really.
DS, what are you talking about here?
Young, Downing and Milner probably covered most of MON’s mistakes, if you take any average seasonal spend out of the equation, imo.
What I’m talking about is this was the time when the money made available could have moved us into real Champions League status. The opportunity was missed. MON spent around £30M on central defenders (Cuellar, Dunne, Collins, Davies) who we sold on for how much? Then again he bought Heskey and Harewood as centre forward for a combined £8M or so. Feel free to give me a justification how that was money well spent.
Do you honestly think the sales of those 3 covered for the above plus all the others? Simple maths mate. That was our chance and it was blown.
If those transfers covered it tell me how we lost so much money. Don’t bother. Simple maths.
I don’t hold this against MON. It’s just a fact of life. A net spend of £100M on players (just guessing here and I could be wide of the mark) should have left us in a much better place than we are, Yes Lerner sold Young, Downing and Milner and made a profit. Look at the very long list of players that cost money though.
Not a pop at you Badger. Just my feeling that we are at a point that leaves most of us pretty despondent, and it could have been so much better.
Young Milner and downing made around £35-40m profit. How’s does that compensate is for mon selling Cahill, bringing in Dunne, Heskey, Collins, Warnock, Luke young, Harewood, petrov (let’s face it no one really rated him till he was ill), Maloney, zat shite, Davies the list is endless. Milner was known to us under dol anyway he cost us our one and only chance for a generation it will probably be another 20-30 years before we even get near top 4 MON pissed that money up the wall then fucked of deliberately to leave us in the shit allegedly
On a brighter note I see that Grealish has signed a new 4 year contract at 10x his previous wage. On that basis a doubling of Delph / Vlaars wages seems a pretty good deal!
Just posted on that one Hitchens.
Bright note indeed, imo.
I find it interesting the amount of ‘concern’ that’s vocalised about footballer’s wages and the lack of connection to the ‘real world’. When we talk about the entertainment industry, world wide, can anyone define what the real world is? Let’s be honest footballer’s aren’t alone in earning vast sums of money which are disproportionate to what the majority of people earn in their daily lives – pop stars, film stars, models, entertainers, American footballers, Russian oligarchs etc., etc., etc., In the main though sports stars have a limited earning life unlike some in other areas of entertainment or business. Do you complain about ticket prices to see Muse etc.?
The World is unfair – fact.
Discussion on what footballer’s should be paid needs to be in the context of the market generally and ability specifically. Are Vlaar and Delph ‘worth’ 50k per week – probably. Will Villa agree to their demands – probably but not certainly. Why because success brings financial reward and both those players are probably vital to Villa over the next four years.
Apologies for the diatribe!
I agree Hitchens. I don’t think most of us have a problem where it is clearly appropriate. Vlaar at £50K, Grealish at £20K, and maybe Delph at £50K or so is probably par. The real problem is that it drags very ordinary players up to £20K per week for example (not a pop at Grealish). £1M a year for being ordinary? I’ll take some of that.
If we were successful or exciting to watch nobody would look at the wages. The problem is we are way away from that, The longevity of the career is a total irrelevance. They are not incapable of work at 33. Fact is, if they are even reasonably well advised they shouldn’t have to work. That is true of average players. £20K per week for 10 years is £10M. Save a bit and invest it. Sorted.
Villa need to pay the going rate to stand a chance of keeping Delph and Vlaar (assuming Grealish is sorted). I accept that. What about Luna, Stevens, etc etc? What about Gabby and Weimann? Joe Cole? I start to struggle when I think deeper into this. Maybe if we were looking at a list of all the squad plus their wages would be interesting. Worth it or not poll!!
Enjoy your posts mate. A different viewpoint to most on here so refreshing.
That sounds like the start of a beautiful friendship.
LOL
now now!
🙂
Footballers are easily the most highly paid workers out there. I remember that tool Noel Gallagher going on about how he thought he was well off until he got a few footy mates…most decent players salary will dwarf any ‘captain of industry’income.
Footy has become very corrupt and very immoral.
Bum Bum, I’m not defending the amount they earn; I happen to agree that it’s become disproportionate in the EPL but the majority of footballer’s plying their trade in the UK earn nowhere near the amounts of the privileged few. I do disagree with you about relative wealth outside football though including, just as a start, top golfers, tennis players, basket ball stars (in USA) and bankers,industrialists, oil magnates and shop keepers (Mike Ashley LOL) all of whom can afford to own EPL football clubs.
What strange world we live in where someone that kicks a bag of air about is more valued than someone that has the skills to save lives but nothing new in it, the Romans did the same with the Gladiators to distract the public from the decline of the empire.
Is that telling us something?
I’m all right I earn £ 645.00 a month , I’m happy. 🙂
more than me mate 🙁
but its the players we pay to see. when you go to a theatre the star performer earns the most usually. the only difference is they entertain you every night and have a high level where most footballers do it now and then depending what mood they are in
Found this interesting, news out of Portugal (A Bola) claim we want Rolando, but have some competition. A name I brought up that could potentially replace Vlaar, although those 2 together would make quite the pairing.