DANNY Rose is a 27-year-old footballer who plays occasionally for Tottenham Hotspur and rather less often for England.

For that he is paid in the region of £65,000 each week – more than twice the average annual wage in this country.

But he is not a happy Danny. He believes he is worth more and reckons he could get it if he moves on, preferably up north.

Time, he says, is running short if he is ever going to win trophies.

So, is this just another everyday story of a footballer pushing for a transfer to a club who will pay more?

Rose, who has not played for Spurs since January because of injury, and is missing from the opening games of the season, is not a name you hear often when fans talk about the game’s finest full-backs and most football supporters have long since given up on complaining about overpaid, under-achieving footballers and their wages.

They now accept it is all about the market place and, just as film actors and pop stars can name their own price for a gig, footballers are entitled to look for the best deal they can get.

The difference is that the player signs a contract to stay at a club for a certain length of time for a regular pay packet. Or is it only until he hears how well some recently-transferred old team-mate is doing somewhere else?

Rose didn’t do his club any favours when he revealed the wage structure at White Hart Lane – where they seemingly have a pay ceiling of £100,000 a week – but he has since apologised and won’t be going anywhere… at least for the time being.

His decision to speak out split opinion.

Some thought he had every right to say what he did and others, including Sky’s top man Gary Neville, called it ridiculous and unprofessional. “When you are trying to promote yourself to other clubs potentially, I can’t believe
that other clubs would be
impressed with that,” he said.

For now, Danny will have to manage on his £65,000 a week until the right one comes along.

WHERE would you start looking if you wanted to find the game that symbolises fair play, good conduct, trust and integrity?

Let’s think…

You might wonder if golf would be as good a place as any for all these qualities (although a certain Donald Trump is a four-handicap golfer, so maybe not).

Or perhaps snooker, where players are known to call fouls against themselves when they are missed by the referee.

Batsmen don’t walk any more until every snicko or ultra-edge has been examined from every angle, so that rules out cricket.

Rugby players regularly try to claim tries when they have not been even close to touching down, and nobody would even suggest putting football forward as a candidate. In fact in a list of 12 sports, football comes in 12th behind boxing and horse racing. More than two thirds of football fans said financial corruption was a big issue.

According to the body who carried out the survey – Sports Integrity Index – repeated corruption and doping scandals have dramatically eroded trust in competitive sport.

And in case you are still wondering, they discovered that British sports followers believe that the game with the highest trustworthiness rating is darts.

Doping and performance enhancing drugs kept athletics down in ninth place, one below cycling which has had similar problems.

Probably, like me, you have never heard of the Sports Integrity Index but their message is blunt.

“Integrity matters and it is up to clubs and governing bodies to show that they can live with the front pages as well as the back or people might stop turning up.”

Now – where did I put those arrars?

USAIN Bolt was given a hero’s farewell when the curtain came down on the World Athletics Championships in the London Stadium on Sunday night. Fine, but isn’t it a pity that we couldn’t have done the same for one of our own? Mo Farah has been our most successful long-distance runner and deserved at least the same. Or am I alone in thinking he is right about getting a raw deal from the press because of his association with controversial coach Albert Salazar?

HERO to Zero stories are commonplace in sport, but even by football standards one of the headlines over the weekend will take a bit of beating.

It followed Burnley’s 3-2 win at nine-man Chelsea – the Londoners’ first game in their defence of the Premier League title. The man who led Chelsea to that championship, Antonia Conte, is the bookies’ favourite to be the first manager to get the sack. At least Leicester had the decency to wait until their title-winning manager had suffered a few defeats before they wielded the axe on the man who had achieved the impossible.