Oh my Darling, oh my Darling

Now and again I come across a sentence that reminds me why I love newspapers. This is from an article by Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian last Thursday:

To see Alistair Darling deliver his budget was like watching a man pushed from a sky-skraper window, falling calmly, even gracefully, as he somehow managed to remove his jacket, raise it above his head and tie it into a makeshift parachute. You couldn’t help but admire his ingenuity and optimism – but you still felt sure it was bound to end in a sticky mess.

I don’t know whether Mr Darling’s budget, or even the British economy, will end in a sticky mess, but one detail in the budget is bound to create at least a little bit of a mess for Manchester United and other PL clubs.

The budget included the imposition of a 50% tax rate on high earners (raised from 40%). Since a high earner is defined as anyone earning more than £150,000 a year, every first-team player in the PL falls into this category. This means that footballers will pay at least 5-10% more tax in Britain than in Spain, Italy and Germany.  For a player interested in how much his pay-packet contains after tax, moving to, or indeed staying in, England therefore becomes a little less attractive.

The tax-hike comes on top of the fall of the pound that has already weakend the clout of English clubs in the transfer market, and is a more severe problem. Maybe the transfer window this summer will be a little less exciting than it used to be.

Clash of the Titans, I

Just a reminder in case you missed the highlight of the media weekend, the meeting between Rio “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer” Ferdinand and Gordon “Saviour of the world” Brown. Full interview here. Very different from a normal interview, a bit chatty for my taste, but that’s also what makes it interesting at times. In a way you feel you get to know both these persons a little better. And as a bonus some insight into John Hartson’s eating habits.