The footballer's defence...

...of high pay is given a doing over here, by the bloke who wrote this, which I blogged about previously.

Notably, for readers who share my interest in the role of shareholders in all this, he says:

The first major obstacle comprises the institutional shareholders, who act on our behalf. The senior executives of these companies, and often those much lower down the scale in the case of pension fund managers, become wealthy precisely because of the talent argument. The ability to do their job is deemed to be highly uncommon, and must therefore be rewarded accordingly. It is unlikely that they would be keen to question the same logic too forcefully in relation to the employees of the companies they invest in, as this would inevitably undermine their own justifications.