Simpson set to run down contract?
Posted on September 11th, 2011 | 11 Comments |
The Sunday Sun (bless its heart) is reporting that contract negotiations have broken down between Danny Simpson and the club. The Sun alleges that the club have offered Simpson a 5-year contract and aren’t prepared to budge from their offer, but the offer is too low to interest Simpson and he will therefore not be signing it.
The Sun does not quote any sources of their information, it merely ‘understands’ that the situation is thus and they further suggest that Simpson will just run down his contract and leave at the end of it unless he is sold in the interim.
It’s all news to Pardew, though, and he insists it’s completely untrue. Pardew said:
“He’s got a future here but he’s got a fight on his hands because Ryan Taylor has done terrific at left-back and now we’ve got Santon who can play both positions. So he needs to play well now.
“I don’t know where the stuff about Danny Simpson came from. It’s totally untrue as far as I’m concerned, anyway.”
Hmm, well forgive me if I doubt you Alan.
To be fair we don’t actually know what’s going on but it would explain why Simpson hasn’t yet signed a new contract and why rumours were floating around about us being interested in a right-back recently.
No doubt this will be part of the club’s policy to only pay players what they consider to be a ‘fair wage’, which is fine in principle but it assumes that the club’s idea of fair wage is at least based partly on what the market also calls a fair wage. Otherwise we’d have a situation where just about anyone who might class as ‘experienced’ and deserving of a ‘better’ wage will be moved on because the going market rate doesn’t align with the club’s estimates of what it should be.
I definitely agree that we must stop paying over the odds for so-called ‘marquee’ signings that are past their best and spend most of the time on a sick note, but I think that must be tempered with a willingness to pay for genuine quality that benefits the club both in terms of ability and experience. I would hope the club doesn’t have blanket upper limits on the wages and transfer fees they’re prepared to pay and that each player is evaluated on their own merits against a reasonable assessment of what constitutes market value.
If this Simpson stuff is true, it doesn’t bode well for the long-term NUFC future for Fabricio Coloccini either. I’m sure he must be one of our highest wage earners and his contract is up round about the same time as Simpson’s.
Time will tell.
Colo will recieve new contract but 30-40k wage drop and only 2-3 years long. Will he sign it ? No. And DL come to say he want to leave again.