Alex Neil refused to directly comment on reports from the back page of today’s Sun, that he was given a £2m severance clause in his contract last summer, when he spoke to the media at Colney on Friday afternoon.
Neil did however insist almost every member of staff, including the players took a pay cut following relegation when speaking to the EDP
“I have never spoken about players` contracts so I will not speak about my contract because there is a national newspaper article out there,” he said.
‘The one thing I will say is when we came down, the players, staff, pretty much everybody who works for the club took a wage cut. That is obvious when you have not delivered your goals and gone down a division in this business. Everybody`s money has dropped and rightly so.
‘I don`t think there is any question (the timing) doesn`t help, a bit like a guy burying his head in the sand. That doesn`t help either. Listen, I am not complaining about that. I am a realist. The last thing I do is sit here and come up with excuses or try to blame anyone else. Far from it.”
I guess you can’t expect Alex to discuss the in’s and outs of his contract.
Would you? If asked directly by a reporter, knowing your every word will be transcribed for the world to see.
Interestingly, he didn’t deny it. Yes, he said that everyone took a pay cut but the issue at the moment for most fans is why hasn’t he been sacked yet?
The suggestion that the club will have to pay him £2m to do that is a reason why that might not have happened and that has seemingly upset a lot of the faithful. I guess that’s football though. What other industry could you work in and get two years salary as a reward for failure, apart from banking?
The fact that such enormous quantities of money are thrown about mean that if he was sacked, he would overnight become a multi-millionaire at the age of just 35.
What a world eh?!
Anyway, on to other matters discussed.
It turns out that James Maddison is not definitely staying at Aberdeen on loan for the rest of the season after all. Neil said that he had spoken to Derek McInnes and Maddison’s agent and that it will depend on what happens in the rest of the window. He basically said that Madders will be at Colney on Monday morning – good news.
Jonny Howson is suspended for the Brentford game and Graham Dorrans will be out for several weeks. Louis Thompson is still out (pelvis) and Matt Jarvis is still building up his fitness.
Who will play alongside Alex Tettey tomorrow?
There are no specialist central midfielders available if Youssouf Mulumbu isn’t. Hopefully he is, if not, Steven Naismith has played the for Scotland and Rangers and Robbie Brady has played there for the Republic of Ireland.
Let’s hope Neil isn’t tempted to play Steven Whittaker there, like he did the last time we were short in midfield and playing Brentford.
OTBC