THE price tag does not always offer the best guide to value. I once bought a very expensive DVD player but it was as temperamental as Christian Bale with a deaf director and a daft script.
It would only play pristine CDs from a specific region. There could be not one speck of dust on it. We had to don CSI suits to insert a disc and then wait to see if the computer said yes. It said no more often than Kylie at the sports desk Christmas night out. I soon learned I had paid the sum total of 10 years of Oman oil revenues for a CD player that did not play CDs.
In contrast, up in the bedroom was a portable TV that had a slot that could accommodate a CD. It resembled nothing more than a modern representation of a sixties Glesca smile, though the TV had more teeth. But here’s the thing. One could stick any CD in the slot and it would play. Indeed, I once shoved a slice of pizza in it and it played Moonstruck, the selected hits of Dean Martin, and the first series of The Sopranos.
There is no doubt, then, that in the battle of upstairs, downstairs, the wee telly not only held all the aces but was able to play them.
But price normally means might. It does in fitba’. There is a line of nonsense that says money cannot buy success. It should, of course, read that money can buy failure but it is necessary for any sort of success. With few honourable exceptions, league positions are determined by player budgets. This reality is what prompts me to pose the most impertinent question since I asked Kylie if she rumba-ed. (She said she did but only after a spicy beach barbie).
No, the question is this: are top football players in England paid too little? I normally agree with Arsene Wenger only when the 29th of February does not fall in a leap year. Intriguingly, the Frenchman bears up well under this burden and loses as much sleep over this as a bear does over the paucity of good telly in November. But this week he talked about bargains in the transfer window, warned that prices were about to rise with such a velocity and steep trajectory that one might consider them a size five at the end of a Junior centre-half’s imperfectly pedicured big toe.
His timing was, though, better than a metronome with OCD and an innate sense of rhythm. No sooner had Arsene spoken than Jonjo Shelvey, who looks like Mini Me on steroids and can play like Mike Myers on Valium, headed off to Newcastle for £12m. He is, in truth, a decent player who has played for England. But no more than that. However, he is the latest sign that both transfer fees and wages are about to rise substantially.
The reason for this increase in player costs is simple. TV money for the EPL is threatening to assume all the proportions of a NASA space project where the rocket is made out of unicorn hide and fuelled by the hydrogenised tears of a mermaid.
Here is the jaw-dropping truth: the club relegated from the EPL next season will receive £100m in TV money. Plus, of course, £85m to soften the blow of travelling to Lancashire outposts in the Championship. Yup, £185m for going down. The winners of the EPL will receive more than £150m, almost certainly nearer £160m. This is TV money from the league. They will, of course, also receive TV money from the Champions League. And from their sponsors. And from merchandising. And from the punter who spends his/her dosh following the quaintly old-fashioned custom of going to the soddin’ game.
Now consider this. If a chief executive decides that four players (Vincent Kompany at centre-half, Paul Pogba in midfield and Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero up front) would guarantee Premier League survival, he could make a case for deals that would make the wages now seem the equivalent of what Spartacus was paid for on a wet Tuesday night in a Roman amphitheatre.
If the EPL TV deal is worth £600m to a successful club over four years, then what could the players demand? If the chief executive paid the four players £500,000 a week, he would have a four-year bill of £416m for them. That is, about two thirds of the EPL telly dosh. Gate revenue, Champions League prize money and television deals, merchandising dosh and other ancillary income would provide further gravy.
Once we gasped as the first player was sold for £1m, now surely the first £1m-a-week player is trotting over the horizon. He will be recognised by his purple boots, sculpted body, and a Mohican haircut. He will not be Scottish. And he will never play in the SPFL.
But be consoled. He is coming to a television near you. Whether the DVD player works or not.
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