Highest earners

All this talk of Bogle returning and Vernam leaving I was wondering the other day which player would have been on the highest wages whilst playing for Town.

Now this can be split into two.

Players who are/were contracted to GTFC

and

Players who have been loaned to GTFC at little or no cost to us.

Of course we have to take into consideration the wage increases across the years.

My guess would be Ivano (contracted) and maybe Dave Beasant (loaned)

I believe Zhang Enhua was on silly money?

Not sure where this thread might take us.

Pre 1960s there were wages caps even though we were in the top league of the day. Who knows what Jackie Bestall would have been worth in today’s terms.

Since then football economics have been all over the place, but right now we have a COVID crisis on our hands, so the real issue is how much can we afford today. If James  Hansen happens to be the biggest earner, so what?

I am sure that Ollie will concentrate on what’s in front of him, rather than look backwards. If we end up getting Omar Bogle at £5k a week, so beit

Time to move on.

Zhang Enhua was on £13500 just before the ITV Digital collapse

Quoted from barrattstandman

Zhang Enhua was on £13500 just before the ITV Digital collapse

And anyone of a young age who believes this to be Chinese Whispers,  think again,  it really IS true.

To put the Zhang Enhua thing into context, around the same sort of era we had Danny Coyne,  arguably the best keeper outside of the Prem, on £3,000 per week,  and the club were touting him around on the promise of a free transfer,  they were that desperate to free up the wages. Now think about the 13K Zhang was on.....

Quoted from Heisenberg

To put the Zhang Enhua thing into context, around the same sort of era we had Danny Coyne,  arguably the best keeper outside of the Prem, on £3,000 per week,  and the club were touting him around on the promise of a free transfer,  they were that desperate to free up the wages. Now think about the 13K Zhang was on.....

Yeah heard he was on 13k, back then the Chinese league wasn't even as popular as it is now so amazing to pay that for someone unknown.

David Nielson was on big money too I believe. As far as players we owned, I imagine we paid decent money to a lot of the Wembley 98 squad.

Not a player but I got told Buckley was on £3k per week last time round.

A fair few of that 1998 side were on decent money compared to our current crop, although it wouldn’t look much compared to wages at that level now.

I’d imagine Badback Butler was on a decent screw...

Quoted from Meza

Yeah heard he was on 13k, back then the Chinese league wasn't even as popular as it is now so amazing to pay that for someone unknown.

He was obscure to followers of the English game, that’s fair, but he wasn’t a total unknown quantity. He was the Chinese national team captain - by no means a Goliath nation in international football, particularly back then, but I don’t think he was a total punt in that respect.

He was a good Division One defender to be fair to him. Just not worth that kind of money in the early noughties, nor was he any better than Peter Handyside who he effectively displaced.

It was clearly an ill-thought out commercial ploy. He was obviously a big name in Chinese footballing circles, and interest in English football was growing rapidly in the Far East at the time. The problem was, there was no way of actually monetising that interest.

Second tier games would not have been readily available to Chinese audiences back then, and internet streaming was yet to become a thing. We didn’t even have an online shop in 2001, let alone the logistical capability to ship GTFC merchandise en masse to the other side of the world.

As has often been the case with Town, it was an interesting idea in principle, just haplessly implemented.