There has been much debate about highly paid footballers rejecting pay cuts and whether they are justified in taking such a stance under the current circumstances.
Obviously, Mesut Ozil stands out for Arsenal but it is not just him, it is about all the other players that are keeping their hands firmly in their pockets, for example, Chelsea players and where are the Tottenham players or Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool etc in all this?
It is also nothing to do with the NHS, it never was and to suggest it was, with respect is misinformation. Every club statement, including Arsenal’s, has made that clear, it was always about keeping clubs afloat and helping the clubs lower paid.
There is no respect from me for those players, to me, it is indefensible.
I watched a recent Sunday Supplement episode and it had three well-known journalists on there, Henry Winter, John Cross and Martin Samuel and all three had some good things to say, though John Cross, who incidentally defended Mesut Ozil passionately, is widely regarded by Arsenal fans as full of bull, certainly on here judging by the comments.
Samuel expressed his disappointment that the players refused pay cuts, he admitted he never saw it coming and thought that they would be more than happy to help the clubs out. He also added that the NHS has never ever had so much money being thrown at it and simply does not need cash from the players, it is the clubs that need the help.
But it was the comments from the highly respected Henry Winter, a winner of many international journalism awards, that I found the most compelling.
He basically asked how the players could look the lowly paid club workers and their fans, who are suffering unimaginably right now, in the eyes when they simply refused to stand shoulder to shoulder with them at this time.
Winter also pointed out that it is also about unity and that players should stand together as a whole, obviously not at Arsenal with three players preferring to keep their money and not give a fig about squad unity.
The players have disgracefully tried to use the NHS as some sort of excuse to avoid helping their own club out, and it is very sad that some Arsenal fans find it necessary to defend this indefensible position.
The pay cut was always about the club and never about the NHS and it is wrong in my opinion to try and conflate the issues, though I have no doubts that if it was Shkodran Mustafi or Granit Xhaka that had refused to take a pay cut that this would never ever be an issue and they would be rightfully condemned by Arsenal fans.
