From £4-a-week to £400,000… How wages have changed in football through history
EARLIER this week, SunSport brought you the evolution of transfer fees in world football... With staggering results.
Once upon a time, the record transfer fee was a meagre £1,000... Now Paul Pogba could be on his way back to Manchester United for an eye-watering £100million.
And it's a similar tale with wages. In the early 20th century there was even a salary cap... No such restrictions these days.
With the transfer rumours swirling amidst another summer of activity, SunSport investigates just how and where the wage bills started getting out of control...
Let's start at the beginning. The very beginning in fact: 1879.
Back in the 1870s, football was a purely amateur pastime, played on pitches and greens across the country.
Yet even then it wasn't immune to scandal, as the importance of winning - the ultimate driving force behind money in sport these days - pushed people to break the law.
Back in 1879, Lancashire outfit Darwen were found to be paying two of their players - Scottish duo Fergie Suter and James Love.
And it was a continuing trend as many teams adopted the 'if you can't beat them, join them' philosophy, which ultimately led to the legalisation of professionalism in 1885.
Paying players was now not only legal, it was the norm. And it with wages spiralling out of control, reaching the £3-a-week mark, the league promptly introduced a restriction...
No player was to be paid more than £4-a-week for their services. That's right, just FOUR pounds per week.
Throughout the next two decades, transfer fees rose - with Sunderland's Alf Common swapping the Black Cats for north-east rivals Middlesbrough for a then staggering £1,000 in 1905.
As the trend of big-money moves continued, the league bumped up the weekly wage to £8 in 1922 - but only £6 through the summer when the season had ended.
With the wages rising, so did the transfer fees, as the first five-figure sum coming in 1928 when Arsenal signed David Jack from Bolton.
It took 20 years for another pay bump to come into effect, as Jimmy Guthrie took over as chairman of the Players' Union.
He ensured each player was eligible to take home £12-a-week and £10 in the summer - a 50 per cent boost.
However, 1961 was the turning point, as just 14 years after that hike, football saw its first £100-a-week player - Fulham's Jonny Haynes - as new PFA chairman Jimmy Hill scrapped the cap altogether.
A year later and the first ever £100,000 was paraded by Manchester United after signing Denis Law from Torino.
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That was followed 17 years later in 1979 by the first £1million player as Trevor Francis was brought to Nottingham Forest.
In the same year, England goalkeeper Peter Shilton became the highest paid player in Britain at a whopping £1,200-a-week.
It took 15 more years until any player hit the £10,000-a-week threshold - and it was Blackburn striker Chris Sutton on the staggering wage-bill.
And just a year later, Arsenal signed Dennis Bergkamp - with the world going beserk for his 'staggering' wages of £25,000-a-week.
Many players at the time were stunned by the salary, with England left-back Stuart Pearce even calling it a 'huge waste of money'.
It's incredible to think £25,000-a-week could spark such an uproar just 21 years ago.
In the same season, the Bosman ruling came into force - allowing out-of-contract players a free move, hence higher wages.
The following season even saw the £15m transfer fee shattered as Alan Shearer joined Newcastle from former Premier League champions Blackburn.
It took Man United hard-man Roy Keane to convince bosses to break the £50,000-a-week mark - doing so in 2000, while Sol Campbell quickly DOUBLED that a year later after infamously swapping Tottenham for Arsenal on a free.
It would appear the turn of the millennium was the turning point in wage-bill history.
Suddenly £100-a-week had become £100,000 in the space of just 40 years - following a century of tiny wages.
Ever since, things have spiralled somewhat out of control.
Carlos Tevez was the man to hit yet another milestone as he became the first £1m-a-month player - taking home a reported £286,000-a-week at 'nouveau riche' Manchester City.
Since then the £300,000-a-week mark has been broken on a number of occasions - even in places such as the UAE and China, as new money dominates football.
Reports last summer even suggested Ezequiel Lavezzi is taking home an outrageous £400,000-a-week with Hebei China Fortune...
Scarily though, where does it end? 1961 saw the wage cap scrapped and the first £100-a-week player.
40 years later, that was ONE THOUSAND times higher. 15 years further down the line that new extraordinary sum has been quadrupled.
Although it seems absurd, it's time to embrace a very real possibility... We may not be too far away from the first £1m-a-week player.
And given the current trajectory, I wouldn't put it past being within the next five seasons...
