29 Mar 2017 23:12:02
Hello 'the ever so hardworking and patient' Ed's. Read recently about Liverpool's contract negotiation with Lovren and how they have reopened talks after failing to reach a conclusion earlier in the year. My question (s) goes as follows;
1) Do players ever take a salary reduction, if they haven't been able to establish themselves at the level that was expected?
2) In situations like these, where there is a general public opinion (and some respectable opinions, such as of Ed1) that the player is not upto the club standard, does the Club use that to offer a contract with a reduced salary or does the Club have a completely different way of approaching that?
3) What kind of things (metrics), if any, are used by the player (or Agent) and Club to determine the new contract value? I am guessing there is definitely off-field appeal and attraction considered, but I might be wrong.

Would love to hear thoughts of either Ed1 or Ed2.

Feel like its not said enough, but Thank YOU to all the Ed's for your selfless devotion to this site.

{Ed001's Note - 1. Very rarely, usually they take lower pay elsewhere rather than stay. The only times I can think of, when a player has accepted a reduction, were in times of financial crisis for the club they played for.
2. Public opinion is never considered or used.
3. The agent and player will meet and set an amount between themselves based on other contracts for similar players, club's financial situation etc. The off field attraction is not involved, except when it comes to image rights, which is not really a salary based deal anyway.}

1.) 30 Mar 2017
30 Mar 2017 16:57:19
Thank you, Ed1. If I may ask a follow up question. What really causes these break downs in Contract negotiations. There are times when papers report that a negotiation was started and then stopped and resumed a few months later. Is it simply due to the Club and players not agreeing on the wages? Just wondering if these media articles make it a bigger hoopla than it actually is, or is there some serious number crunching done in these negotiations?

{Ed001's Note - usually they just reach in impasse and go away to think things over for a bit. Or it can be that time imposes itself. Player's representatives have lots of other players on their books usually, so they can't just sit and haggle over figures for days on end.}