Money

[owdhamer]

Are overpaid sportsmen ruining sport,several football clubs including glasgow rangers, portsmouth,port vale, birmingham coventry etc all well respected names in professional football are on the brink,in rugby union most of the welsh team play in france as their clubs cannot afford them

[VHG]

>>>Are overpaid sportsmen ruining sport

I am not sure you can "blame" the ovepaid sportsmen, any more than you can blame Tom Cruise if he gets paid 20 million for making a film and it loses money.

I think you CAN blame the over rich owners who buy players and pay wages far in excess of what the club can afford.

Portsmouth's troubles have come about because the last few owners have bought "top" players and paid huge salaries to players and manager when the club itself did not have the income to back it up.

As soon as one owner got into financial trouble himself, and had to stop bankrolling the club, their troubles started.

During Harry Redknapp's recent trial it came out he was being paid 4 and a hald million pounds a year as manager of Portsmouth. Was that his fault, or the stupid owner who gave him that salary.

Both the owners of Chelsea and Man City have used hundreds of millions of pounds of their own money to "bankroll" the club, knowing they will probably never get it back.

I heard the other day Fulham are 190 million pounds in debt, all bank rolled by Al Fayed.

So if you are going to "blame" anyone blame the owners who throw money at clubs and put the clubs massivly in debt.

p.s. While many players probably are overpaid I remember a game last year (Man U v Chelsea I think) that was shown on TV round the world and had an audience of half a BILLON people. So the players do deserve a decent salary for providing that much entertainment to so many people.

It is the overpaid players at Blackburn and Wigan and Bolton and so on who probably dont deserve the big salaries.

[VHG]

>>>in rugby union most of the welsh team play in france as their clubs cannot afford them

I am not a Rugby expert but is that not because there is a maximum wage cap in the UK and not in France, so the French clubs can pay more salary that the UK clubs.

Of couse this only goes to prove that all sportsmen will go wherever the salaries are, which I guess is true of most of us.

[FredPuli43]

I blame Jimmy Hill.

[Davethedog]

I agree with VHG and I would add, that TV has added to the financial pressure.

The Champions League is now the nirvana of football and the Premiership a close 2nd, the fortunes wasted in pursuit of both hinder football. Nobody looks at the economics anymore they just look for a "rich" man to take them forward.

Maybe a cap would sort it, as VHG points out the best rugby players leave because of the cap, so possibly the quality of the games watched declines, but at least the rugby fan has a club to watch.

Is the way to save the Portsmouths of the game, to ensure that no one has to compete with billionaires?

[HowardKennitby]

Some interesting historical facts here

http://www.economist.com/node/18709691

[Everhelpful]

Totally agree with VHG,only thing is He forget to mention Sky's Money,wait until they stop their funding and see the sh!t hit the fan.(No pun intended).