The Sidwells

[Tennessee Blue Mike]

A wally is right. But with tongue in cheek he doesn't care as long as somebody greases his palms.

 

[Rook]

I get a laugh when people say that (It's about the money and not about the football.)

Look, it's real simple here.

He was offered much bigger wages than he was on at Reading and on top of that, the chance to play at a bigger club.

Everyone and their dog here would have taken that deal. Anyone who says they wouldn't is a flat out liar. And don't give me any of this "Yeah but at Reading, I'd be playing more." And naturally, if he didn't take the deal and move to Chelsea, he would have been criticised as having "no ambition."

Yeah sure, in hindsight you would have been but Sidwell made the move and thought he could break into the first team. It didn't work out. Happens all the time in football.

But what really makes me laugh are those who deride him for staying there and picking up those wages while not playing. "He has no ambition !!" "He doesn't care about football, just money !!!" Oh please.

The career of a footballer can be short and for the money he's being paid, and presumably saving, he can set himself and his family up for life. Are you really going to begrudge him that?

As mentioned earlier. It would be one thing if he was a VDM and a waste of the club's resources but the guy can play. Unfortunately for him, he had several class players in front of him at Chelsea. Kinda tough to break into.

And by that same logic, SWP should have left Chelsea and taken a pay cut after his first year as well. Well look at how that turned out. He stayed, fought for a place, and eventually earned more playing time. Could that have happened for Sidwell? Sure it could have but it didn't.

But sure, go ahead and tell him to go from 60k a week or whatever he's on to 20k a week somewhere else? Hahahaha...much easier said that done, especially from this side of the fence.

Reading did low ball him and only offered about 25k/week I believe when he was clearly the best player. However he could have went to Villa, Spurs or someone else for as high as 35-45K/week given that he didn't come with a transfer fee. Sure the difference between 60 and 40K/week is alot however if I was a professional footballer I would go wherever I could in which I would play alot. You only have a few years left in your life to play football and the rest of your life to count your money or gamble it all away or whatever.

 

[Sharpys top lip]

Reading did low ball him and only offered about 25k/week I believe when he was clearly the best player. However he could have went to Villa, Spurs or someone else for as high as 35-45K/week given that he didn't come with a transfer fee. Sure the difference between 60 and 40K/week is alot however if I was a professional footballer I would go wherever I could in which I would play alot. You only have a few years left in your life to play football and the rest of your life to count your money or gamble it all away or whatever.

Ye but you only have a few years left to earn as much as you can. Most football players are dopes, so would never make money outside of football.

 

[Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian]

at the end of the day we are talking about vast amounts of money for kicking a bag of wind about,
52 weeks in one year £25,000 a week. i wish i'd earned 25 grand a year let alone a week, on that rate he would earn more in 1 year than quite a lot of people do in a lifetime of HARD toil. i dont buy into this short career so got to earn as much business, there are plenty of jobs when they retire, in the media for one, working like g.sharpe does for the club and whatabout becoming coaches and p.e.teachers or is that below them these days ?