World beaters at £507 a week
Apr 11 2007
by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post
WHEN Liverpool FC’s players walk out on the pitch against PSV Eindhoven at Anfield tonight the team will be on a collective weekly wage bill of something near a staggering half a million pounds.
Top earner Steven Gerrard alone is thought to earn in the region of £100,000-a-week, a far cry from what the players earned in the early 60s as the legendary Bill Shankly began a reign fashioning his Boot Room style of management and a team that would become world beaters.
Proof of the gulf between yesterday and today has been unveiled by Richy Owen, landlord of The Exchange pub in Old Hall Street, who has an original copy of the Liverpool FC wages bill for one week in August, 1961.
The total for 29 players and four staff, including two future club managers, Joe Fagan and Bob Paisley, was £507, 13 shillings and two pence of “old money” for the week – or around £25,000 a year, a grand total that would barely sustain the current average Premiership journeyman for seven days.
In those days, however, Liverpool’s “top whack” players – including former Blue Dave Hickson and burgeoning young guns Roger Hunt and Ian Callaghan – were on the princely sum of just £23 plus single figure bonuses, as Mr Owen’s list shows.
Lower down the scale on £20 was even one of Liverpool’s greatest scoring legends, Billy Liddell, then in the twilight of his playing years.
Paisley was earning £17 a week with a £4 bonus, while Joe Fagan’s return was £16 minus the reductions for tax and rent for his “digs”.
“It’s a phenomenal difference,” said Mr Owen, now 71, but who in 1961 was a 26-year-old, watching his heroes from a packed terraced Kop of around 26,000 souls.
The wages list was passed on to him by a friend who was an LFC club shareholder with terminal cancer.
“I think he knew he was coming to the end of the line and wanting to give it a good home,” explained Mr Owen.
Meanwhile, Ian Callaghan, who has just celebrated his 65th birthday, is philosophical about the astronomical money being earned by the players today. In 1961, Liverpool’s squad were already benefiting from the scrapping of football’s £20 maximum wage in January of the same year, thanks to the work of the then Professional Footballers’ Association chairman, Jimmy Hill.
The top earners were also earning on average twice as much as the average wage of the manually-skilled working man.
“I actually thought I was well- paid when I played,” said the legendary Toxteth-born winger who played for England, and ended making the most first team appearances for the club.
“When I first became a professional I immediately started earning three times as much as I was earning as a central heating engineer.”
He added: “You’ve got to re- member the game has changed a lot since I was playing. There’s so much money coming into it from sponsorship and such things that the money argument is not relevant to players who, if they are at the top of their game in any sport and not just football, should get a fair share of it.
“So good luck to them.”
CLICKY - Daily Post
Apr 11 2007
by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post
WHEN Liverpool FC’s players walk out on the pitch against PSV Eindhoven at Anfield tonight the team will be on a collective weekly wage bill of something near a staggering half a million pounds.
Top earner Steven Gerrard alone is thought to earn in the region of £100,000-a-week, a far cry from what the players earned in the early 60s as the legendary Bill Shankly began a reign fashioning his Boot Room style of management and a team that would become world beaters.
Proof of the gulf between yesterday and today has been unveiled by Richy Owen, landlord of The Exchange pub in Old Hall Street, who has an original copy of the Liverpool FC wages bill for one week in August, 1961.
The total for 29 players and four staff, including two future club managers, Joe Fagan and Bob Paisley, was £507, 13 shillings and two pence of “old money” for the week – or around £25,000 a year, a grand total that would barely sustain the current average Premiership journeyman for seven days.
In those days, however, Liverpool’s “top whack” players – including former Blue Dave Hickson and burgeoning young guns Roger Hunt and Ian Callaghan – were on the princely sum of just £23 plus single figure bonuses, as Mr Owen’s list shows.
Lower down the scale on £20 was even one of Liverpool’s greatest scoring legends, Billy Liddell, then in the twilight of his playing years.
Paisley was earning £17 a week with a £4 bonus, while Joe Fagan’s return was £16 minus the reductions for tax and rent for his “digs”.
“It’s a phenomenal difference,” said Mr Owen, now 71, but who in 1961 was a 26-year-old, watching his heroes from a packed terraced Kop of around 26,000 souls.
The wages list was passed on to him by a friend who was an LFC club shareholder with terminal cancer.
“I think he knew he was coming to the end of the line and wanting to give it a good home,” explained Mr Owen.
Meanwhile, Ian Callaghan, who has just celebrated his 65th birthday, is philosophical about the astronomical money being earned by the players today. In 1961, Liverpool’s squad were already benefiting from the scrapping of football’s £20 maximum wage in January of the same year, thanks to the work of the then Professional Footballers’ Association chairman, Jimmy Hill.
The top earners were also earning on average twice as much as the average wage of the manually-skilled working man.
“I actually thought I was well- paid when I played,” said the legendary Toxteth-born winger who played for England, and ended making the most first team appearances for the club.
“When I first became a professional I immediately started earning three times as much as I was earning as a central heating engineer.”
He added: “You’ve got to re- member the game has changed a lot since I was playing. There’s so much money coming into it from sponsorship and such things that the money argument is not relevant to players who, if they are at the top of their game in any sport and not just football, should get a fair share of it.
“So good luck to them.”
CLICKY - Daily Post
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