Originally Posted by
Alex
No, I don't think money is much of a factor for him at all. He apparently paid the "Spy-gate" fine out of his own pocket, which was a couple of hundred grand I think. The club would obviously have covered that.
He lives (or at least did) in a little flat he rents above a shop in Wetherby so he can walk the training ground. People always used to see him in coffee shops or doing his shopping at the Morrisons. Although you don't see that as much over the last year or so, so maybe he has got himself some fancier, Premier League digs. But I would be surprised. He doesn't strike me as a money orientated person at all.
I think the chairman would happily nail him down to a very lucrative, multi-year deal but he never signs for more than a year at a time, and he never renews until the end of the season either.
The key question, like you say, is what is the "next step" for him with us. It's a strange one because he never even seems bothered about signing new players either. He's more about "what can I get out of what I have here". I guess you need to keep him interested enough to feel like there is more he can do. You have to look to the chairman and the director of football to invest and give him more to work with in that respect.