Making sense of Pardew's wages comments.

There seems to have been a minor uproar this morning concerning some comments made by Alan Pardew in the Sunday Sun. Hopefully this will clarify things.

There are two areas of contention. One of them, which I will look at later on in the article, is about the ambition of the club whilst the other one, which I will take a look at now, is about our wages. I'm assuming that those who are kicking up a fuss can't really read though as they seem to be hinting at something entirely different to what Alan Pardew said.

Basically, the question Pardew was asked was about the ability to attract players over the likes of 5th placed Tottenham and 6th placed Liverpool. Here is what he said:

“I don’t think we’re anywhere near Spurs in terms of the wage bill. Theirs is double ours, so you can forget about Spurs."

“That doesn’t mean to say we can’t compete with them on the playing pitch. On transfers, we can’t compete with their wages. We can’t compete with Liverpool’s wages. We’ve got to face that reality. We can’t.”

Now somehow this has translated into us having a wage cap that is half of what the likes of Tottenham and Liverpool pay their players. Now my eyes aren't brilliant, but even I can't see the words "wage cap" mentioned. I can see the words "wage bill" though, so the real story is that two teams that finished 5th and 6th have a higher wage bill than a team who is only in the second season of Premier League life. So where is the problem?

You look at the income that the two clubs in question and it far exceeds what we generate. Liverpool rake in more than double what we make each season, even without Champions League football, whilst Tottenham rake in a lot more than us - £130 million a year roughly. The best that we've ever done is £100 million in one season (£99.4 million back in 2008 in fact). although the last time we were in the Premier League our income was closer to £80 million.

So is it really any wonder those two clubs pay more wages than us? Also, can anyone give a credible reason why the likes of Hatem Ben Arfa and Yohan Cabaye signed for us, and why Cheik Tiote and Steven Taylor signed new deals if our wages are so derisory?

The second bone of contention seems to be regarding ambition. Once again, here is what Pardew had to say in that very same Sunday Sun article:

“Having said that about wages, we can get a top-10 finish, we can get a top-eight finish - we can, even, get a top-six finish maybe, if things went really, really well for us. That has been proven."

“Then we need – at some point – to kick on. I think where Mike is at the moment, he wants the club to be stable. He wants to see that there’s some stability here."

“He wants to see we can get a top ten finish next year and then, maybe, we can get him excited enough to attack the top level after that. That’s where we want to be.”

From that it has been gleaned that the club want to settle for top ten year after year, with no improvement. It's not what Pardew himself says though is it? He is saying we can go higher. Does anybody really think that the club would bemoan the fact that we finished 8th instead of 10th? Please, have a word.

What is wrong with top ten for our second season back in the Premier League anyway? I think it's a perfectly reasonable target and it would of course be an imporvement on last season. Isn't that what we all want? Improvement?

I just think that sometimes people need to take a step back and realise where we are. I don't think there is anything essentially wrong with what Alan Pardew is saying as it's all pretty much common sense if you have the ability to look at things in a balanced way. I do question the wisdom of saying anything at all though, but then again, in black and white, the questions are there and Pardew is just responding to them.

Interestingly though, the same people that are kicking up about these comments are some of the same ones that hint that Alan Pardew talks shyte quite often, yet this time he isn't.

When it suits eh? When it suits.....