Yes agreed, obviously its a balance

and we probably won't ever be in a position to be shelling out ?15m or ?20m on players but my point was that there has to be a raising of the wage ceiling otherwise we are just going to be placing ourselves at a complete disadvantage. I'm sure that is what will happen/is happening but some of our fans seem to think we can get by paying our top players ?15k a week and the fact is we just can't at this level because every other club in the prem will be paying more. Even the sh*t squad players at clubs like Villa will be on ?35-40K a week. Players heads will either get turned or they will just let their contracts run down and move on for a bigger wage.

To a degree there's not much we can do about that as we will never be able to match some clubs. What we can do, however, is make sure we are at least competitive with the likes of WBA, Fulham, Reading, Saints, Wigan etc and to do that we will have to start paying some players ?25K a week.

I'm not advocating Pompey style idiocy but provided we are sensible with any increases we offer and (as discused below) include relegation clauses then we ought to be able to give our best players reasonable prem wages without jeopardising the future of the club.

If Holt wants to leave then f**k him and let him go but ?1.2m a year for Holt is not outrageous because there will be other clubs who will pay him twice that.

Posted By: Jim, Jun 13, 09:33:28