NEIL ‘RAZOR’ RUDDOCK played in the Premier League for the likes of Liverpool, Tottenham and West Ham.
The 54-year-old former defender also won his solitary England cap in 1994.
He spent five years with Liverpool, and in his prime scooped a cool £20,000-a-week wage at Anfield.
But footballers’ wages have sky-rocketed in the last 30 years, with reports suggesting the Prem’s current top earner, Kevin De Bruyne, rakes in a mind-boggling £425,000-a-week.
And Ruddock, who recently had a gastric sleeve procedure to help him slim down, admitted he would not have been able to cope on that sort of money.
He said, via the Daily Star: “If I signed a new contract [now], 300 grand a week, a three-year contract, I’d have a month and I’d go to the gaffer and say, ‘Gaff, this is not for me, I’ve had a think about, it’s not for me…’
READ MORE IN FOOTBALL
“I bet there’s players out there who don’t want to play because football’s hard work. There must be hundreds of players out there taking a fortune.
“The last six months of my Liverpool career was one of the best six months of my life because I was getting 20 grand a week and Saturdays off. Thinking about it, what a six months that was!
“There must be hundreds of players that ain’t played 10 games that are multi-millionaires.”
Ruddock even declared he would have been “dead” if he were picking up £300k on a weekly basis.
Most read in Football
BETTING SPECIAL – BEST FOOTBALL BETTING SITES IN THE UK
He continued: “In 10 years you’ll have players saying, ‘We only got 300 grand a week. How can you survive on that!’
“I’d be f***ing dead! I’d be dead if I had that.”
Ruddock recently confessed he had concerns about his health after his weight ballooned when his eating and drinking spiralled out of control.
Razor first suffered a health scare while filming an ITV show with Harry Redknapp in 2019, called Harry’s Heroes: The Full English.
He was told he was at a risk of a heart attack and needed to lose at least five stone.
So he decided to have a gastric sleeve procedure to help him slim down, and has shed seven stone thanks to the surgery.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
