Who do Premiership footballers think they are?

Football is the people’s game, entertainment for the working man, a chance for the average Brit to let his or her hair down. But is it really?

The price of a season ticket in the Premier League ranges from £224 (Blackburn’s cheapest available) to £1825 (Arsenal’s most expensive). Although Blackburn’s ticket price is actually quite reasonable (about £12 per home league game), and there is probably a league cup ticket thrown in for good measure, it is their cheapest so you could be sat behind a concrete pillar. Arsenal’s most expensive is a whopping £96 per home league game. One would assume that the view is pretty good, but even so, that’s a lot of money for the average football fan to fork out in one hit. So can the people actually afford to watch their own game? In Blackburn, probably, but in North London it could be a struggle.

And what of their heroes: the players. Wayne Rooney, idolised by many a Manchester United or England fan owns approximately twenty cars, valued at around £1.4 million. As far as automobiles go, one may struggle to argue that young Wayne has remained in touch with his Liverpudlian roots.

The Rooney’s don’t live in a three bed semi-detached either, it’s more a country mansion surrounded with hi-tech burglar alarms and CCTV. Would that be considered “grounded”? Probably not in Croxteth. So are these people really deserved of the hero worship of the public in general?

A story in this weekend’s Sunday Times seemed to suggest that some of these footballers only pay around 2% tax on some of their earnings. When you consider that most of us pay around 30% including National Insurance contributions, then one wonders how these footballing stars sleep at night. It also makes you wonder whether the country would be going through financial hardship if these guys actually paid full whack to HM Revenue & Customs.

Let’s face it, 30% of Rooney’s £250,000 per week (he turned down a reputed £288,000 per week at local rivals Manchester City – the sacrifices one makes) would put something of a dent in the national debt.

He’s not alone. Other players named include Gareth Barry (£100,000 per week), Ashley Cole (£120,000 per week), Rio Ferdinand (£100,000+ per week) and Michael Owen (slumming it on £30,000 per week plus large appearance fees), to name but a few. I suppose on their wages they can afford top accountants to find these loopholes in tax law, but that doesn’t really rid one of the bitter taste.

Football and the money involved has become obscene, and in my view the sport can no longer be considered the people’s game as a result of the gargantuan sums of money sloshing sround. Can you really blame these players though? If someone offers you £250,000 per week, even the most stoic of us would struggle to reply with something along the lines of “Just give me enough to pay the mortgage and reserve me a parking space”, unless the mortgage on your mansion is around £250,000 per week I suppose.

The bubble will burst at some point, and quite a few clubs will struggle financially, even go under. It’s at that point that clubs will find out who their real fans are, and at the same time discover which players really are still men of the people. My bet: very few.