Ex-Villa boss Taylor unhappy with top managers taking bonuses for player sales

Former England coach Graham Taylor is against managers getting bonuses from player sales.

Taylor wrote in the Daily Express: "I am not holier than thou but I never liked such bonuses and I have never been paid a bonus for selling a player.

"I considered selling players to be part of my job, for which I got paid anyway. And my job was to improve players and have a successful team.

"One of the biggest transfers I was involved in was selling John Barnes from Watford to Liverpool in 1987. We bought John for a set of shirts and shorts and sold him for £900,000.

"It was the right time to let him go, he needed to be at a bigger club. I set up that deal, then left to take over at Aston Villa as it went through.

"That was a lot of money back then, but it would not have been right for me to take some of that as a bonus. It is not fair. John had come through the youth system – so what about the youth-team coach? Shouldn’t he get a slice? What about the first-team coach or the assistant manager?"