Arsenal FC recently asked their players to take a 12.5% pay cut if they fail to qualify for the Champions League but the squad have outrightly rejected this offer.
A number of football fans have come out to bash the players urging them to sacrifice their wages so that the non-essential staff can be paid in full and there’s no need to furlough them.
But former England forward Stan Collymore has shown his support to the Arsenal squad claiming they are within their right to reject the proposal.
“If Arsenal’s players had shown in the Premier League these past five or six years the sort of fight they’re showing in their wage battle with the club then they might actually have won one,” Collymore wrote in his Mirror Sport column.
“They’re displaying Champions League-level unity in their discussions around potential wage cuts or deferrals, which isn’t something we’ve said about them on the pitch for some time.
“To be fair to them, though, they are absolutely right to say they won’t accept a pay cut that will only become a deferral if they qualify for Europe, because the club shouldn’t be moving the goalposts now on contracts that were signed in good faith.
“As I have said several times these past few weeks, if a club had come to me in my playing days and said, ‘Stan, these are exceptional circumstances and we need to defer your wages’, then I’d have had no problems in doing it providing I got what I’d signed up for at some point during my contract.
“But what I do have a problem with is clubs who’ve raked in hundreds of millions of pounds for many years now suddenly trying to find ways around not paying players what they are owed.
“Whether it’s when the 2019-20 season ends or even when the 2020-21 season ends, players should get back any monies they have deferred in the coming weeks and months.”
Are the Arsenal players doing the right thing?
A number of smaller clubs across the UK have put their non-essential staff under furlough while their players and management have bee forced to take pay cuts primarily due to their financial instability. But Arsenal are currently owned by Stan Kroenke who is estimated to be worth US$10 billion as on 2020.
On top of that, the Gunners are one of the most recognisable football brands in English football meaning they draw in sponsorship money left, right and centre.
So clearly, there’s no massive need for such a rich club to ask its players to take a huge pay cut so early into this whole scenario without even offering a deferral solution on the table.
It’s still unclear what the final solution will be but if the Arsenal players unanimously agree to reject the pay cut then the management might have no other option but to backtrack.
