Crystal Palace winger Andros Townsend and the club’s former owner Simon Jordan had a lively debate on talkSPORT on Tuesday.
The pair locked horns over Premier League players not taking pay cuts and their contributions to the football pyramid.
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Top-flight stars came in for criticism at the start of lockdown for their supposedly muted response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Calls were made for them to take pay cuts and the debate became politicised when health secretary Matt Hancock waded in to the conversation.
He encouraged football stars to ‘play their part’ while a few clubs, most notably Tottenham and Liverpool, decided to make use of the furlough scheme before later backtracking.
Some players agreed voluntary cuts or wage deferrals but it was on a club-by-club basis rather than as a collective.
Premier League players did launch the Players Together initiative, a fund to donate money to NHS charities, which has raised millions.
talkSPORT host Jordan, though, didn’t feel that was enough and the ex-Palace owner outlined his disappointment at the failure of players to take wage cuts to help sustain the football pyramid.
It led to a lively exchange with current Palace star Townsend, which you can read in full below…
talkSPORT
Simon Jordan said: “I don’t bleat on but I hoist the hypocrisy of players’ contributions and the idea that player pay cuts were part and parcel of a sentiment that needed to happen for the very industry that was screaming out. And nonsense initiatives, like Players Together, that raised £4million out of 600 players.”
Andros Townsend replied: “Nonsense initiatives?”
Jordan: “Andros, have a look at this for dynamic. You guys were asked to take pay cuts and look at pay cuts. You put together an initiative which was pretty much circumnavigate the possible that you might have to be able to feed the pyramid.
“You put £4million in it, which is between 600-700 players in the Premier League, which is less than 10 per cent of an average player’s weekly salary.
“The average player gave up 16 hours of their pay to contribute to an initiative that circumnavigated the real bigger problem, which was giving away tens and tens of millions to help the pyramid. Your lesser colleagues in Leagues One and Two were bleeding out of their eyes.”
Townsend: “Let’s talk about the pay cuts. Let’s take Arsenal for an example. They either took pay cuts or wage deferrals. [Mesut] Ozil was obviously against it, he received a huge backlash.
“They took the pay cuts and after that Arsenal still sacked 55 staff or made them redundant. After that they sacked the mascot and then after that they spent £45million on a new signing. What was the reason why these players should take a pay cut?”
![Townsend [left] said he would have taken a pay cut at Crystal Palace if the club needed it](https://talksport.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/06/NINTCHDBPICT000615073770.jpg?strip=all&w=960&quality=100)
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Jordan: “They laid off 55 people because these people were part and parcel of a stadium environment that wasn’t utilised. If Coca-Cola lay off people in their business but still spent tens of millions on their marketing campaign, people would say you are trying to manage you business.
“Arsenal would have gone and spent money on players because their core product, I’m not defending it by the way, I’m giving an explanation for it. Arsenal would continue to buy a product that is part of their marketing reputation that would be able to achieve the wellbeing of the club.
“What I was talking about is players taking a pay cuts not to feed the Premier League but to feed League One and League Two clubs down there because they are bleeding out of their eyes.
“What I said on this show many times, if this industry is bleeding out of its eyes and if it’s a football family then perhaps a 20 per cent pay cut for 90 days is what players could have taken solely for the purpose of funding the challenges that happened further down the pyramid.”
Townsend: “That was never the debate. We are talking about the NHS and everyone wanted us to take pay cuts for the NHS. We didn’t do that, we created a fund to go directly to the NHS.
Jordan: “That’s not true, Andros. That was a hijacked conversation that Matt Hancock had with somebody where somebody asked him a loaded question and he gave a stupid answer. Then what happened was everyone jumped on it.”
When asked if he would have taken a pay cut at Palace, Townsend added: “At the time, it was not about taking a pay cut to make billionaire owners richer. If we were going to take a pay cut it was going to save the staff, the non-playing staff, or stadium staff or people who really needed it.
“Our chairman came out from day one and said ‘no, our revenue is not mainly from stadium, we should be okay to continue paying you guys through this and everyone through it’, and it was debate closed.
“If they had come to us and said ‘listen, we can’t pay the masseur, we can’t pay the stadium manager, we can’t pay this person,’ of course we would have come together as a club to do the right thing. Fortunately that wasn’t the case for Crystal Palace.”
You can listen to Townsend vs Jordan on talkSPORT above
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