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.
