Taylor pay rise a scandal, says Gold

Birmingham City chairman David Gold last night described the 50 per cent pay rise awarded to players' union chief Gordon Taylor as scandalous.

Taylor, already the best paid union leader in the country, now earns £484,135 and Gold, a critic of the PFA chief executive and his organisation, was quick to go on the attack.

He said: 'I recently accused the PFA and Gordon Taylor of building a mausoleum to greed and I take no pleasure in saying I told you so. 'What sickens me is that this cash is coming from television monies awarded to the clubs which should be used to pay our players. Instead, we are seeing a percentage of it going to the union who then hand themselves big pay increases. It's scandalous.

'We, as chairmen, are attempting to persuade the players to take cuts because of the slowdown in revenue and recent TV digital disasters and then we see something like this happen.'

Taylor, 57, used to play for Birmingham but that cut no ice with Gold. He added: 'The timing of this is shocking. They talk about how they bail out hard-up clubs but fail to mention that this is in the form of interest attached loans which put lower division clubs in more trouble.'

Ironically, Benito Carbone will receive an impassioned plea from the PFA representative at Bradford to accept the offer of a cut-price pay-off.

The Italian striker is haggling over a severance deal, with Bradford offering him just £800,000 of the £3million-plus owed on his contract.

And Bradford defender David Wetherall, the club's union representative, has urged his colleagues to contact Carbone with requests to settle rather than leave the troubled club with even more problems.

The camp is split on £40,000-aweek Carbone; some feel he is entitled to his cash while others want him to take the deal for the sake of his former club-mates.