Spurs players unhappy at Levy salary revelation

According to The Times some of Spurs first team players were stunned yesterday to discover that the club’s chairman, Daniel Levy, was paid more than £6 million last season at a time when he is insisting that they accept pay restraint.

Levy’s remuneration of £6.013 million in 2016-17 is roughly double that of any other Premier League chief executive and, at the equivalent of £115,000 a week, is higher than the basic salary of any of Tottenham’s players, with Harry Kane said to be the club’s top earner on £100,000 a week.

In the past we have refused to meet the salary demands of a number of our leading players, most recently Toby Alderweireld and Mousa Dembélé, during increasingly tense contract negotiations, and the details of Levy’s pay have allegedly caused disquiet in the dressing room.

The size of the chairman’s pay packet was revealed in the clubs annual accounts that show that Levy received £6.013 million in 2016-17, more than double the £2.84 million he was paid the previous season. The article adds that the huge increase is understood to be a one-off payment that included bonuses for achieving record turnover for the club and delivering the new stadium, which is due to open at the start of next season, rather than a new salary.

However according to the article the players are not interested in such nuances as Levy’s steep pay rise comes at a time when the club are negotiating hard in contract talks with a number of the squad, including Alderweireld, who has barely been used by Mauricio Pochettino after the breakdown in negotiations.

The article goes on to say that Dembélé has also said that he will not sign a new contract before entering the final 12 months of his existing deal in the summer. This all follows Danny Rose’s public outburst last year, complaining that on a salary of £65,000 a week he is not paid what he is worth.

It adds that many of the clubs other players are understood to feel the same and are growing resentful that players they consider to be inferior playing at smaller clubs under less pressure are more highly rewarded.

Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen, Son Heung-min and Jan Vertonghen are all due to hold talks over signing contract extensions at the end of the season.

The clubs annual figures also show an astonishing rise in revenues to £306.3 million last season compared with £209.8million the year before, partly because of Champions League income (£44.6 million), the rise in TV money from the Premier League and higher prize money from finishing second in the league. Profit after tax was £41.2 million and wages were up by 26 per cent to £126.9 million, 41 per cent of turnover.

So what do we think about the money paid to Daniel Levy, The Times are usually pretty accurate and they do say that a lot of the money paid to Levy is owed to him in terms of bonuses but it won’t have passed the players by.

Do you think it would annoy the players, or even Pochettino to see that the chairman is taking home such a package considering his stance on players wages or is it justified considering the new training centre and stadium and various other deals he has struck in the last few years? Let us know your thoughts

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