- Dec 27, 2014
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I think Gabrielle Marcotti recently debunked the £400k/pw theory - he reckons it's about £250k/pw gross. Don't know how accurate he is though, especially since the £400k is being widely reported.
That's the trouble with these stories, everybody reports the contract differently to suit their agenda. If they want the narrative to be "Look what a ridiculous contract this is" then they report the gross amount including maximum bonuses etc. etc. which the player is unlikely to ever get. So presumably he'll get 400k/week if, for example, he plays every single minute of every game, scores a goal in each game, the team win the League, CL, Cup, and so on. Plus because he was a free transfer they've probably included his signing-on fee and spread it over the length of the contract. But his base salary is probably nowhere near that.
Conversely, if they want the story to be about how stingy the club is being, then the story will conveniently just report the net amount of the base salary, even though the player would most likely be earning more than that.