Arsenal players and technical staff have agreed to cut their annual wages by 12.5% to help the club during the pandemic crisis of Covid-19, the Gunners announced on Monday.
This decline will be effective from April, said the club, even if “the contractual documents must be finalized in the coming days”.
The London club said, however, that players will have the opportunity to regain the money they gave up by “fulfilling certain objectives in the coming seasons”.
The English press had revealed in recent days that the players only accepted this discount in exchange for the guarantee of recovering the money and an additional bonus of 100,000 pounds (120,000 francs) per player if they qualify for the Champions League.
If they qualify for the Europa League, the pay cut will be reduced to 7.5%, the media said.
“We will be able to make these payments because these objectives, over which the players have a direct influence, would put us in a more solid financial situation”, explain the Gunners in their press release, without confirming the exact terms.
Arsenal are the third Premier League club to announce this type of action after Southampton and West Ham, but it is the first Big 6 club to make this financial sacrifice.
Before them, only Southampton (14th) and West Ham (16th) had announced agreements on wage cuts which have been demanded for several weeks by public opinion and the political world.
Coaches like Graham Potter (Brighton), Eddie Howe (Bournemouth), joined on Monday by Chris Wilder (Sheffield United) had announced that they were giving up a significant part of their fees, accompanied by the main club leaders.
But the decision of five clubs of the English elite, including some very wealthy, to take advantage of the government short-time unemployment program for their non-player employees, while continuing to pay their players normally, had caused an uproar.
Liverpool, Tottenham and Bournemouth have since changed their minds, while Norwich and Newcastle are continuing their plans for the time being.
ats, dpa
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