Wayne’s World

I was planning on writing this article days ago, but this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down at my laptop and bash one out… the article I mean.

Anyway, unless you live under a rock you’ll be fully aware of the Wayne Rooney/Manchester United situation and just how ridiculous and disgusting it is.

Regardless of whether Rooney’s new salary comes in at over or under £200,000 a week, the whole thing stinks.

But what does it mean for the Seasiders?

Well, at a basic level, our highest paid player is only on around £10,000 a week. Rooney’s wages only serve to further underline the gulf between the smaller and bigger clubs in the Premier League. Then again, is Rooney really worth twenty Charlie Adams? I guess we win on the value for money stakes at least.

At some point though the Seasiders are probably going to have to break their £10,000 salary cap if they really want to establish themselves in the Premier League.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we pay anyone around £200,000 a week, far from it. But there is certainly scope for the Seasiders to offer players better wages; perhaps the two most prevalent cases in point being Matt Gilks and David Vaughan who as it stands are both out of contract in the summer.

Indeed, Ian Holloway is already on record as saying that the club risks losing the pair (amongst others) because other Premier League clubs can blow us out of the water when it comes to the wages on offer.

The trouble for the Seasiders is that the Rooney situation is likely to have a knock-on effect: other players will see the money that Rooney is on and negotiate better deals for themselves… and eventually that vicious cycle will feed its way down to Blackpool, and the club will be forced to increase its wage bill simply to hold onto the players they have never mind strengthen the squad.

Perhaps the worst thing to come out of all of this though is that the biggest club in the world have had to bow to the demands of one of its players in such a manner… never before has that happened, and things will never be the same at Old Trafford or in the footballing world again.

What that means is that other players will think ‘Well if Rooney can do that to Manchester United, then I can definitely do that to a smaller club e.g. Blackpool’. We have the very real situation where a player may feel he is bigger than the club and hold us to ransom.

It’s a great shame that is the case and the pendulum has well and truly swung in favour of players over clubs, but it’s a situation that we’re going to have to deal with with confidence and niftyness.

Shame Karl Oyston’s our chairman then, eh?