Ashton reveals West Ham mega pay deal
Deano told Talksport Radio “When I came back from injury and Craig Bellamy was then in the club, Kieron Dyer was in the club, Freddie Ljungberg had come to the club. West Ham were paying big money, we all knew it as players. Once I got back to what I thought was my best and started to produce, that’s when we went in – I forget what I had left on my previous contract – to negotiate a new deal. We said so-and-so were interested in me, all of that gumpf that you hear all the time that’s fed in. We knew what people were on so were saying to West Ham: ‘I want to be paid the same as them, if not a little bit more, and I want in the contract that if anyone else comes in that they don’t supersede me’, and we got that into a new contract.”
Ashton signed a new five year contract in 2008 but was forced to retire in 2009 through injury. Considering Kieron Dyer was on £83,000 per week you can only imagine the deal that Deano struck with the then chairman Eggert Magnusson.