I suspect timing is everything with negotiating contracts in football, especially with the transfer windows.

Say you're a good but not world class striker, its the last couple of days of the window and a club in desperate need of a striker tries to sign you. They agree terms with your club. You say you're not interested. They make a better offer. Still not interested. At this point the club is panicking thinking without a recognised striker what could the financial implications be? Relegation? The offer goes up and up until you can't believe what you're being offered.

Another point in football which seems almost too ridiculous to be true is the standard contract players have (in the Premiership at least) entitles them to the full value of their contract being paid up if they are transferred, so if you sign a 5 year deal worth £60k a week (£3.12m a year) and with 3 years to go you are sold to another club, you are entitled to over £9m payout. Usually if the player really wants to move, the club will just make them an offer (maybe not of the full amount) to facilitate the transfer. So 'journeymen' players that move around clubs, make a lot of money, by keeping signing contracts, then part way through moving on, settling up the rest of their contract left to run, and signing at a new club again on a good wage. This is why they make such a fuss over whether a player puts in an official transfer request, because if they do, then they forfeit the right to have their contract paid up. So as a player, if you want to trigger a move, you have to make it clear that whilst you are unhappy (at things that aren't your fault, eg the manager/not willing to be a squad rotation player/lack of club's ambition) you keep issuing statements saying you are determined to stay and fight for your place, so the club has to move you on for being a bad egg, but you haven't put in an official transfer request.

The same goes for all types of industries. I've known the wages for everyone at work for my last three jobs and you'd be surprised how many people who aren't very good at their job can earn a lot more than those who are.

It's futile comparing RL player's salaries to footballers simply because the money isn't in RL...Football TV rights run into the billions and who should receive the bulk of the money ? The players that's who Otherwise the cash would go to the directors and shareholders and who goes to watch the directors and shareholders ?

Nobody is comparing. The point is, not many people know about salaries, and those that guess usually think better player means better salary.

The other thing that gets said is that home grown players are cheaper. That only holds for a year or two though if a player is in his breakout season and does very well but is on a small contract. If a player does significantly well he's going to (reasonably) expect to get a new contract and if he doesn't he'll look elsewhere.

If home grown players were cheaper then when we were skint surely we should have kept Harris and Sculthorpe as they would have been great players to have on a bargain budget! Same with Wakefield when they were going bust (aren't they always) and they had guys like Westwood and Ellis.