Portsmouth Players Rally To Pay Staff Wages

Chris Wright

12th, March 2010

6 Comments

By Chris Wright

PA-8340565

The playing staff at debt-ridden Portsmouth (lead by veteran keeper David James and club captain Herman Hreidarsson) are preparing to pass the hat in order to keep a number of key training ground staff in employment until the end of the season.

The entire squad are said to be willing to club together to keep the staff members, who are seen as a vital part of Portsmouth’s push to reach their second FA Cup final in three seasons, in work – at least until the summer.

The players and their representatives are now trying to work around the tricky legal statutes in place regarding any such payments.

Now don’t get me wrong. I think it’s a noble gesture from the Pompey squad, but I’m not sure it could logistically happen as there will surely be various red tape technicalities in the way, e.g. wouldn’t the players have to form a company to pay wages to staff – as taxes and National Insurance would surely still apply?

Anyway,  it’s a heart-felt gesture from the Portsmouth playing staff and here’s hoping that any legal issues can be bypassed – for the sake of the selected staff member’s short-term livelihoods.

Posted in Portsmouth

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6 Comments

  1. Delboy Dublin says:

    Aren’t these the same players (Hreidarsson & James aside) who refused a pay cut only 3 days ago, leading to the mass redundancies in the first place? Heartfelt gesture my arse! 2 gents amongst a team of wasters

  2. mizman says:

    i dont blame them for not taking wage cuts initially as there was not mass redundancies and a new owner was thought to be found within the forseeable future. Jamo and Hermann have done the right thing even if it turns out to be not to a practical option. The players to blame are ones like Jon Utaka who is reportadly on 80,000 per week.

  3. pfcCornwall says:

    @mizman: You are ill informed. Where on earth did you get that figure from? He’s never been reported to be on £80k a week. He’s on around £28k according to an announcement by PFC a month ago.

    That having been said, it’s still a ludicrous amount of money for someone who has never lived up to his potential, primarily because Harry didn’t like him.

    I’m not turning this into a Harry-Bash but he paid over the odds for Utaka, then decided that he didn’t like him and just left him on the sidelines rather than selling him on, a typical Harry move. A certain David Nugent suffered the same thing.

    It should be possible for the players to set up a Ltd company, employ the staff completely separately from PFC. As long as HMRC are paid correctly it shouldn’t be an issue.

    Were the players asked to take a pay cut? I missed that. Any chance of a link to the report?

    It is great to sea our senior players leading by example. Let’s hope other join in.

    PUP

  4. Delboy Dublin says:

    Apparently, if every player agreed to a 5% wage cut per week, and even that would only be until the club came out of administration, the redundancies could have been wholly avoided. All but the two afore-mentioned players turned it down immediately. Pampered, greedy wastrels, the lot of them

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