Steven Taylor wants £60,000 a week.
Posted on August 25th, 2010 | 257 Comments |
Initial indications suggest that the reason for this is indeed that contract talks have broken down, but who is to blame for it?
I would suggest that his agent isn’t too far away from being the cause of the problem, and Metro Radio has suggested that Taylor didn’t even know he was going to be placed on the transfer list.
It isn’t the end of the world though and I feel that the club may be playing hardball in an attempt to get Taylor to instruct his agent to accept a more realistic salary. Taylor has apparently been offered a four-year deal worth around £40,000 a week by the club, but either he or his agent, probably the latter in fairness, wanted nearer to £60,000 a week.
Lets put that in perspective. Thomas Vermaelen, the Arsenal defender, is on less that £40,000 a week, so this whole debacle smacks of greed on the part of the Taylor camp. Taylor was quoted as saying that negotaitions were being left to his agent, so the finger must surely be pointed at Paul Stretford.
This is another indication that Newcastle United will no longer be held to ransom or taken for mugs. In no way shape or form is Steven Taylor a £60,000 a week defender, which is why I support the club in this decision.
If it manages to convince Taylor to stay then fair enough, but if he goes then I don’t believe he will be a great loss. Let’s not forget that we won promotion without Taylor and have started the season looking pretty solid at the back, again without Taylor. The days where he was an automatic first choice have gone and he would now have to fight for his place in the team.
We have Fabricio Coloccini, Mike Williamson, Sol Campbell and Tamas Kadar who can all play at centre-back, plus we have a couple of highly rated kids coming through the academy, like Jeff Henderson, that can now move up the pecking order, so we have enough cover.
The timing of this news does not come as a surprise either. At the end of the day Taylor will be free to talk to other clubs in January and walk out on a free transfer at the end of the season. It makes sense to cash in on him now, although I don’t think we will get too much money for a player who has spent the last 8 months on the sideline through injury, who is in the last 12 months of his contract and is now on the transfer list. My guess would be £3-4 million maybe.
It’s a blow, but it isn’t the end of the world
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
60K a week…fookin Joker.
We don’t need prima donna’s-clearly not many players like him either….get your bags packed Steven and close the door on your way out.