[St Charles Owl]

I'm with Blue on this one. Players have short careers in comparison to the rest of us but as stated earn a heck of alot more, but as Blue said that affords them a lifestyle that we can only dream of but still needs to be maintained. Charlie Austin is a classic case of this, he was reportedly on 100k a week at Southampton, moved to you guys and is reportedly on 70k a week, so he did take a cut to get game time. But there was only 2-3 clubs in the Championship that could afford to do that deal, those on parachute payments, so his marketability in the Championship is very limited because of his wages. The average wage in the Championship is 29k/week and while I would expect Austin to be higher than that its reasonable to say the most he is likely to get form other teams in the Championship is 40-50k/week. So if he was to do that he would be taking a 50% pay cut over what he was on a year ago. I believe his contract runs out after next season, so he can either sit it out on the bench for you guys and earn 7m or move to another championship club and cut that by 3m or so, a lot of players will not take that hit unless they are forced to.

Of course if he can get a move to a PL club, its a completely different story where the average wage is over 10 times that of the Championship!!! But I think the Championship is probably his level now anyway.