Rather hilariously, the Daily Mail have revealed that Liverpool are playing Glen Johnson a staggering £139,000 a week.
It was widely rumoured that – for some bizarre and unfathomable reason – Chelsea were also competing to re-sign Johnson back in June (along with 50 or so other players), continuing the club’s recent tradition of collecting right backs. The Mail seems convinced that, in order to ensure he wasn’t lured back to West London, Liverpool had to offer him wages of £139k a week, making him probably the highest paid full back in world football and at least on par with the likes of Fernando Torres at Liverpool.
Johnson hasn’t had a bad start at Liverpool (I realise their defence has leaked five goals in three games), and his attacking displays have started to point towards why Benitez was willing to pay Portsmouth £17m for his services. But this is a player who, despite what he has since said, had plenty of chances at Chelsea (50+ appearances) and did not impress defensively, especially when compared to the rock solid Ferreira. I’d wager that as the season progresses Liverpool fans will increasingly come to realise that Johnson is a little naïve at the back and probably not up to it against the very best opposition.
In light of all this, Chelsea ‘having’ to rely on the current meagre options in the squad – Bosingwa, Beletti, Ferreira, Ivanovic – seems to have worked out pretty well. Not only does £139k a week vastly overrate Johnson’s ability, paying him that much would surely have sent Ashley Cole into a new round of tantrums – apparently he’s just been offered only £120k a week…
Chelsea fans – am I wrong and should we have been in for our old right back? Liverpool fans, is he worth £139k a week? Post a comment...
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What a load of rubbish. You've just copied this story from another site, who incidentally got it from a paper that had no source whatsoever. More time wasting bullshit being printed
Posted by: Paul | 26 August 2009 at 12:38
Just a quick note regarding that comment: nothing from this post was copied from any other website, although of course the source of the story (ie. the Daily Mail) was referenced in the first line.
Other than that, I'll assume Paul that you're a Liverpool fan and think he's on nothing like £140k.... But I could be reading you wrong.
Posted by: Russell Saunders | 26 August 2009 at 12:41
Dont be an absolute monkey gerrard and torres dont get that. Anyone who puts worth in a daily mail story should be ridiculed. Its a worthless Nazi rag.
Posted by: Peter Gill | 26 August 2009 at 12:45
are you on crack?
Posted by: paul | 26 August 2009 at 12:46
i do quite like Glen Johnson but to pay him that sort of wages would have been ridicules, he doesnt deserve it, he might be good but to pay him more then torres or even close to him is an insult and a bad decision on the managers part, as ive noticed through time the daily mail is one of the worst places to obtain any truthfull information (i still like to read the rumurs even if they are all made up though)
Posted by: alex | 26 August 2009 at 12:54
It never ceases to amaze me what absolute rubbish some supposedly intelligent people will believe!
Posted by: MikeW | 26 August 2009 at 13:00
MikeW - I hope you're not suggesting the poster has intelligence.
Posted by: Gary | 26 August 2009 at 13:04
Your whole arguement loses any degree of reality with this one line...
"especially when compared to the rock solid Ferreira"
Ha ha!
Posted by: Rich | 26 August 2009 at 13:08
Sorry, the comment on this site is normally a cut above many others but you have let yourself down with this post. Irrespective of believing the Daily Mail (or any paper) the concept that a footballer's wage in these days of performance payments, trophy bonuses, sponsorship and image rights can be described as a per week sum is laughable. Many payments are not made or known until some time after the event as numbers get calculated, audited and argued over etc. In 3 years time if Liverpool win every trophy in sight, Johnson plays 87 games, scores 50 goals and sells a million shirts, then there may be enough information to divide by 52 to get a "weekly" wage and it may well be £140k but if all that happened then it would have been worth it.
Posted by: Stanstreason | 26 August 2009 at 13:17
No player in the world is worth this much money per week and this shows perfectly how football is "contaminated" with money today. Thank you, Abramovich, for starting the "contamination". You have destroyed football forever!
Posted by: No_fan_of_football_anymore | 26 August 2009 at 13:34
Stransreason - thanks for your post and reasoned argument. I think you're probably right, there's a lot of nonsense that's talked about weekly pay packets that's hides the real picture.
And I 100% agree on the Daily Mail. Haven't bought the paper in my life. But just because it's a deplorable paper in some ways doesn't mean that everything it says that you don't like isn't true. Plus, Martin Samuel writes for them and he's pretty much the most interesting sports journalist out there. Saying all that, I should have qualified that just just because the Mail is saying this doesn't mean it's DEFINITELY true.
Oh and Rich - if you genuinely don't think Ferreira wasn't a very capable right back then clearly you didn't watch him play. Right backs don't need to do anything special - they just need to be solid defensively and get up and down the right. Ferreira did that. We all hate Gary Neville but he's in the same vein...
Posted by: Russell Saunders | 26 August 2009 at 13:39
He is not on anything like that figure. Gerrard and Torres are only on £120,000 so I highly doubt we would be paying Johnson 20k more than them.
Posted by: Joe | 26 August 2009 at 13:45
jesus, you liverpool fans take things a bit seriously don't you?!
you're criticisng the poster for being unintelligent (when he was actually relatively positive about Johnson even though he was a bit average at Chelsea) but there isn't too much of it going around here.
i do agree though that's its a little unlikely that he's on that much each week. still, we all choose to read what bits of the gossip columns we pay attention to, Chelsea fans included
Posted by: chelsfan | 26 August 2009 at 13:59
In response to:
"No player in the world is worth this much money per week and this shows perfectly how football is "contaminated" with money today. Thank you, Abramovich, for starting the "contamination". You have destroyed football forever!"
I'm pretty sure Liverpool aren't contaminated with money. They're skint!
And Glenda is definately on £140K a week. My Mum's hairdressers paperboy told me!
Posted by: ThePupsPLums | 26 August 2009 at 14:16
The local Paper the Echo stated it was 70k a week. A well informed source so its total nonsense (unless of course you really believe we would pay him more than Gerrard and Torres.
Posted by: Sean | 26 August 2009 at 17:27
I think it matters very little what amount he is making, or anyone else at 'pool for that matter, as they quite obviously are not challenging anyone for anything this year!
Posted by: Josh | 26 August 2009 at 19:26
@@@@Stanstreason how did abramovich ruin football? other clubs were paying £30mill+ for players years before abramo came to chelsea, so perhaps you should be informed before throwing remarks everywhere...... henran crespo joined a club for 30mill, think was either parma or lazio. Man u payed leeds 29 mill for r.ferdinand. and i'm sure similar figures were like this for figo and buffon. and we are talking back in 200 for some of these. so your comment was unimformed and pointless.
in relations to the post i don't think he is on anything near 140k, half that would be more reasonable
Posted by: kieran | 26 August 2009 at 21:05
whether johnson is worth such amount of money depend on these questions:
was he sleeping in his former club when they were almost relegated?
was contribution has he made in Everton during his stay?
was he sleeping when liverpool lost 2 matches in 3 games.
my brother,stop enviness and support leading team.chelsea will not bid for johnson that we sent packing few years ago.
up chelsea!
Posted by: bobby | 26 August 2009 at 22:05
look at the number of liverpool fans taking offence! deary me, i think you'd all kill yourselves if you had to put up with a fraction of the rubbish that chelsea fans are forced to endure from these tabloids.
as for glen johnson: never rated him, never will. outstanding going foward, but he'd have trouble marking a parked car if he were asked to.
i cant wait to face liverpool this year... i envisage some absolute pwnage taking place.
their defence is uncharacteristically poor - and thats pretty hard to fathom considering ofcourse that hardly any of your on-field personnel are invested in attacking roles.
yes, thats a convoluted way of saying liverpool are shite in attack..and yes, i did insult your team. what are you bin-dippers going to do about it? rob my house perhaps? shag a goat out of frustration? sing you'll never walk alone while robbing a house and shagging a pet goat? no? ;)
Posted by: paul is gay | 26 August 2009 at 23:41
Please tell me that this is exagerated! Glen Johnson is on £140k? Jovanovic is bad enough on £120K.
Posted by: Trampolines | 02 December 2010 at 12:39
After a great start in the first race, a couple of problematic races as you said, now the championship for you is well and truly alive.
Posted by: Supra Skytop | 26 January 2011 at 08:20