John Wilmott guest column: Has English football gone nuts?

Many professional footballers receive extortionately high wages, sometimes unbelievable sums of money.
Mansfield Town in pre-season action against Sheffield United last summer.Mansfield Town in pre-season action against Sheffield United last summer.
Mansfield Town in pre-season action against Sheffield United last summer.

It is money that most people can only dream about.. but has anyone thought of the ever suffering fans, a family of four, two parents and two children are paying any thing up to £100 and more to go to visit their local team, 23 times a season, £2,300 pounds per year or more.

The cost plus food and drink and travelling expenses means they are not always getting value for money.

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Sitting in a cold and draughty stadium, listening to abuse and swearing, and idolising their team only to see them once again behind 2-1 at half-time.

Full of sorrow the parents have a pint and a pie to drown their sorrows while the kids have a pie, chips, crisps, and a drink, normally twice the price of a normal fish and chip shop.

A gale is blowing as their team attempts to fight back, the children have left their top coats in the car and start to shiver. Still more misery as another goal is scored against their side. The match ended. Their team lost 4-1 at home.

The moral of the story is, half the population of Britain cannot afford to visit these football matches. when a team drops their entrance fee in the lower leagues for a match, they get many more people through the turnstiles, what is better, a quarter full stadium at £25 per person or a full stadium at £10 per person?

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And on top of that think of all the secondary spend that would become available to the club.

Back to a bit of sanity, when will England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have a decent team, I feel they should do like the professional cricket teams and only allow two imported players in each side giving our youngsters the opportunity to develop and reach a high standard of performance. then and only then will our team be among the elite in the world.

Finally there needs to be a cap on players salaries, £300k and above per match is senseless making players into saints, that they are not and some of their behaviour is monstrous and unacceptable. No child should have to see it.

Now what would be a fair deal, you have to remember in semi professional non-league, salaries start from around £100 per week.

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In League One and Two around £1k a week up to £10k a week. The Championship starts from around £4k a week up to £40k a week and finally Premiership start from around £10k a week up to £350k a week.

Your readers thought’s please on a reasonable wage. What should the cap be?