Neville: Premier League tried to ‘bully’ players into pay cut

Arteta Gary Neville Manchester United

Gary Neville has accused the Premier League of trying to ‘bully’ players into taking a 30 per cent pay cut.

The Premier League announced a series of measures on Friday afternoon that included ‘a combination of conditional reductions and deferrals amounting to 30 per cent of total annual remuneration’.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock had already put pressure on Premier League players to “take a pay cut and play their part”.

The players rejected that blanket pay cut on Saturday and questioned why they should prop up football clubs when they would rather support good causes in the midst of this coronavirus crisis.

Neville has sympathy for the players, telling Sky Sports:

“The first thing I’d say is players do want to contribute to the NHS, to the lower leagues, to the non-playing staff, to ensure that their money does go somewhere that is helpful to the people they want to support.

“If you want to bring people on a journey with you, to take a wage cut, you have to land that softly.

“Trying to bully them by announcing it mid-afternoon Friday and calling them to a meeting on the Saturday with their manager and owners is probably not the best way to land the blow as hard as that would have been, to the players.

“I do think the way it has been handled from day one has been a mess, I don’t think it’s been quick enough and ultimately it shows the lack of leadership we have at the moment to come together to capture the mood of the country.”

 

“What we saw on Friday afternoon was a collaboration of maybe a couple of weeks, but then I thought the Premier League went solo.

“They didn’t increase the funding for the EFL and non-league, they advanced money but didn’t give extra funding which those clubs so desperately need. They gave a £20m fund to a good cause, which I think is welcome but I think it could have been more.

“They asked players for a 30 per cent pay cut, which equated to around £550m.

“I think there was an opportunity for the Premier League to stand tall and do a number of things. One was to distribute to a good cause quickly. Second was to increase funding for EFL and non-league.

“Another was to go to the players and have meaningful discussions with the captains of the clubs for how they could work together to support not just the local cause but the national cause, and nobody has been able to bring together football, a leader to bring together football in this time to find the right decision.”