“Our group chat is shite,” says the player at the other end of the phone. “You’ve got some of the group who… they wouldn’t do anything, but we can see what’s happening and know it’s not the end of the world [to defer wages]. And then you’ve got some who are happy to do it once certain conditions are met, and they’re nearly there. And then you’ve got some who are just, ‘No, I’m not doing that.’ But the weird thing is, because you’re team-mates, you’ve got to protect the people who don’t want to do anything. And you’re thinking, ‘They’re just knobheads.’”

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Nothing divides a dressing room quite like money — 13 in favour and 14 against was the result of Arsenal’s initial pay-cut vote. Actually, maybe that should be nothing divides a WhatsApp group quite like money, given that’s where the salary discussions are generally taking place these days.

In some cases, players are being asked to reply with a tick or a cross. In other instances, the shop steward — normally the Professional Footballers’ Association rep or captain — opens up the floor. And then hides behind their sofa. “You’re getting 25 different opinions in a group,” adds the player. “So where do you even start?”

Understanding a pay deferral is very different to a pay cut is probably as good a place as any — and that’s not to say signing up to accept a deferral is an easy decision. Everybody’s personal circumstances will be different.

Some players have tried to find a positive amid the pay talks and taken the view that deferrals are essentially a savings plan. Others aren’t convinced. “It would be in a legal contract that we’d get the money back at some point, but even then you’re still getting people coming back saying, ‘No, no, no.’ Some people are just arseholes,” says the player, who agreed to speak to The Athletic on condition of anonymity.

In fairness, the situation isn’t straightforward. At clubs where bonus payments haven’t always been made on time, or where there is a disconnect between the players and the board, the scepticism is understandable. At Watford, for instance, talks over a deferral have been skewed by some players’ lingering resentment over a bonus they have never received for last season’s results.

“Some things are legitimate,” says the source. “You’ve got people saying, ‘What if I go and they say they won’t give me the money back and they’ll use it against me?’ And people are asking what money our owner is putting in. Some players think that we’re doing it because other clubs are, rather than because we need to do it. But the problem is that some of the lads who say ‘no’ are the sort of lads who then go and spend £15,000 on a table for a night in London. It’s not like they’re super-savers and the tightest player in the world.”

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The potential ramifications to all of this are already being talked about within clubs, and some managers are genuinely concerned about the possible fall-out once everybody reports back to training grounds and matches start up again. It’s not just about how players feel about the club after being asked to give up some of their wages without necessarily knowing exactly how that money will be used; it is also about how players feel about one another.

Will a player’s stubborn refusal to sacrifice a penny be in the back of his team-mates’ minds? Could the disagreements during those WhatsApp conversations, and some of the ill-feeling that has followed, damage the harmony in the squad? And what happens if a player who wasn’t willing to fall in line with the rest of his team-mates is bloody awful in one of the first games back?

They aren’t easy questions to answer. “It’s a difficult one,” the player adds. “I don’t think it will be too bad. I think the effect will be that the players who don’t [agree to a deferral or cut], the difference will be that the club will fuck them off in some capacity. And if they do that to a player, quite frankly, I won’t have any sympathy whatsoever, whereas before I’d have thought that was out of order on the club’s part.

“I think it now seems worse than it is because you don’t see them or speak to them every day. But once you’re in a dressing room and having that general laugh, I don’t think it will be too bad. Don’t get me wrong, if someone makes a mistake in a game, instead of just brushing it off, you’ll probably think, ‘He’s a fucking prick.’”

Another player listens to all those quotes being read out and chuckles. “I can imagine all of that,” he says. “Our lads are on the same page [and close to agreeing a deferral]. But I’ve been in dressing rooms before where it would be an absolute nightmare. Sometimes you need someone dictating to the other boys what they’re going to do because otherwise… I know lads that I’ve played with who would say, ‘I’m not giving anything up,. It’s my money, it’s in my contract. Why would I give the club anything back? It’s not my fault.’”

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This is the player, he explains, who drags his heels when it comes to paying a fine for being late or — and you don’t have to be a footballer at the highest level to relate to this one — says, when everybody else is taking it in turns to get a round in on a night out on holiday, “I’ll just pay for my share and give you my 20th of the bill. It’s like, ‘You tight bastard!’”

Senior players should, in theory, be taking control during the negotiations and looking after the interests of the younger or lower-paid members of the squad, who are often anxious about speaking up or being too opinionated because they have far more to lose. At some Premier League clubs, players have also pushed for any team-mates who are going to be out of contract in the summer to be exempt from salary deferrals.

There is another interesting issue that has come up during negotiations between players and their clubs in relation to the summer transfer window. “Our argument is that we don’t want to be doing pay deferrals and then the club going out and spending that money on new signings and wages,” says the second player.

It is easy to see why clubs have found this whole issue such a headache. For many managers, who normally spend their days on the practice pitches and leave the finances to a chairman, chief executive or sporting director, it is uncharted territory to be regularly discussing pay with players and, in many ways, an eye opener.

Perceptions can quickly change. “In terms of player mentality, when it comes to money and taking something from them, you just see a different animal. An absolutely different animal,” one manager says.

“And I think it’s a really interesting point what you say [about the possible impact on the dressing room]. It’s down to the individual whether they accept a pay deferral, and it is voluntary. But it’s a team sport and you want everyone to be together. It’s going to be fascinating when we start playing again to see the teams that thrive and the teams that blow up.”

While pay talks are taking place at clubs almost everywhere, Arsenal are a fascinating case study. By Friday, the majority of the Arsenal players had given written agreement to a 12.5 per cent pay-cut proposal, which will now be worked through in detail on a one-to-one basis. Arsenal had hoped for unanimity, but the agreement is voluntary and they will proceed regardless of whether every player signs up.

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Arsenal’s pay talks had pretty much split the squad down the middle until the board rolled out head coach Mikel Arteta. The Spaniard’s intervention was a game-changer and, by and large, it always will be when a manager gets involved in pay negotiations with players. At that stage, the lines become a little blurred and, from a player’s point of view, it ceases to become a purely financial decision. How can it be if the man speaking on behalf of the owners also decides whether you’re in the team on match day?

Although Arteta did say he would respect whatever decision the players reached, he also encouraged his squad to accept the pay cut. After the group call had finished, Arteta followed up with one-to-one conversations with certain players. Essentially, his oratory was enough to turn the tide and led to all but a few of the squad consenting.

Arsenal released a statement on Monday announcing a voluntary agreement had been reached, yet it is far from the united front that has been presented to the world by the club. A significant number of the playing squad are unhappy about the way the club went about implementing the cut.

Arsenal initially communicated their proposal through Hector Bellerin, their PFA rep, who relayed messages via a WhatsApp group. That immediately put some players on the back foot and left them wondering why the club didn’t deal with them directly about such an important issue. Others wondered whether it was fair for the younger players — some of whom are still teenagers — to find themselves handling a complex financial situation. One agent said it felt like an attempt to “pull the wool over their eyes.” Words such as “coerced” and “manipulated” have also been mentioned to describe how at least one player felt. Arsenal called them “positive and constructive discussions.”

Those players who objected had similar questions: why are we being asked to take a cut when clubs such as Southampton are doing deferrals (Arsenal’s turnover in the latest set of accounts, for 2018-19, was £367.5 million; Southampton’s was £149.5 million)? Where is this money going? Is there any guarantee it will protect other jobs? Why is it for 12 months when we don’t know the true financial impact of the COVID-19 crisis? Why is the figure 12.5 per cent? Is the owner going to put his hand in his pocket?

In truth, there are more questions than answers. The fact that the world is in the grip of a global pandemic explains a lot but not everything. Some wonder whether there is an element of opportunism on the club’s part, bearing in mind that Arsenal have, in the words of Josh Kroenke, owner Stan’s son, “a Champions League wage bill on a Europa League budget.”

It was interesting to hear the thoughts of Erkut Sogut, Mesut Ozil’s representative, who spoke to The Athletic’s Raphael Honigstein earlier this week. Sogut, to be clear, was not talking specifically about Arsenal but in more general terms when he addressed the issue of pay cuts and deferrals.

“It is not enough for a club to present a proposal to one member of the first-team squad and then ask them to go to the rest of the squad and get their consent to do it. That is not how individual contract negotiations should take place,” Sogut said.

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“A club may even ask a first-team manager to negotiate with players and this may influence some, particularly younger players, or those on the fringe, who fear there might be personal repercussions for him if he does not agree.

“In those circumstances, it could be questionable that any consent from the players would be legally binding anyway as some players are not in a position to give true consent if they are under pressure to do so.”

It subsequently emerged that Ozil is one of the Arsenal players (it is understood there are also two others) who refused to accept the cut. Arsenal will plough on whether or not that situation changes, and save somewhere between £25 million and £30 million a year. But at what price?

Will any lingering resentment, coupled with the fact Arsenal are the only Premier League club to announce a pay cut so far, mean that what is gained on the balance sheet is lost on the pitch? And how will it play out within the squad, and in the mind of Arteta, if some players don’t accept the club’s terms? Do you lose a little respect for a team-mate? Or do you not care if they still win you a game?

Financial disparity is already an issue at Arsenal. Ozil, the highest-paid player in the club on £350,000 per week, makes more in seven days than teenage left-back Bukayo Saka does in a year. Nobody in the squad would begrudge Saka a pay rise — the club are keen to reward the 18-year-old’s progress and extend a contract that expires in the summer of 2021 — but how will it go down if senior players get new deals in the next 12 months too?

One leading agent says Arsenal’s board relied heavily on David Luiz as well as Bellerin during the pay talks and suggests the 33-year-old Brazilian, who is believed to have supported the club’s proposal at the outset, is keen to extend his contract by another year.

The same agent admits that he encouraged one of his players at another club to accept a pay deferral without any fuss in order to maintain good relations with the board before trying to negotiate an improved deal once football returns. “If you know you’re going to be there for a while, you’re going to play the game,” he says.

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But what if you don’t play the game? When it comes to the situation at Arsenal, families and agents have told The Athletic they feel players were put under pressure to agree to the pay cut, and also made the point that bringing Arteta into the fray created the impression that refusing to play by the rules could impact on first-team opportunities.

Arsenal’s players had been open to a pay deferral with certain conditions — they wanted assurances any lost income would be returned if a player was sold and also guarantees that their money would go towards protecting the jobs of non-playing staff at the club — and there is a feeling an agreement along those lines would have got unanimous approval.

Instead, the only way that they will get all their money back now is if they qualify for the Champions League in 2020-21. That could motivate some. It could demotivate others.

And then, rather curiously, there are those who may end up earning the same regardless.

“I was asking a player to take a pay cut or a deferral, and then 24 hours later asking him to go and play a game of football for me and try and get three points. It was a little bit crazy,” says Michael Appleton.

Appleton, who is now the manager of Lincoln City in League One, is remembering the chaotic 12 months he spent in charge of Portsmouth across 2011 and 2012, when they were placed in administration, docked 10 points and relegated from the Championship. Barely a week passed without redundancies, pay cuts or deferrals being discussed.

“I had at least three or four of my own footballing staff who needed time off to try and negotiate something with their bank, to try and freeze the mortgage,” Appleton adds. “It’s just like what’s happening at the minute. They were strange conversations to be having but that was the world I was living in.”

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Finding a way to keep the players motivated was a challenge. “Time and time again I used to say to the lads… ‘When we first started playing football it was for the love of the game.’ I hate using that phrase but it’s true; we did it because we loved playing football.”

Appleton recalls turning up to work one morning and the kitman telling him they wouldn’t be able to train because the locks had been changed on the container where the footballs were kept — another bill had gone unpaid. It reached the stage where the club couldn’t even afford to pay for MRI scans on injured players, prompting Appleton to ask during a press conference if anybody locally could help out. “And we did get one step forward,” he says.

Yet it is the conversations he had with his squad around money that resonate most now. Appleton felt that the players were far more likely to agree to a reduction in their salary if he was transparent about where the money was going to go.

He recalls an early meeting with the club’s first administrators and being told that seven staff needed to leave with immediate effect. Appleton called the players together in the dressing room, reeled off the roles that were under threat and asked his squad, who were already deferring some of their wages, if they would consider sacrificing another five per cent. An agreement was reached in a couple of minutes.

“If players have got a little bit of clarity on things, I’m sure they’d be a lot more forthcoming,” he says. “I think the more information you can give players, the better. I think it’s the way you do it as well.”

Some of Portsmouth’s pay negotiations dragged on for months. They had high earners during that time — Benjani, Nwankwo Kanu and Tal Ben Haim among them — and not everybody in the squad was willing to compromise. Talks with a few continued well beyond the end of the season.

Appleton says he ended up in a situation where some players were earning 10 times as much as others. In a way, the negativity and apathy among a small number was even more damaging than the absence of any sort of salary bracket.

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It was more than tough. Portsmouth were relegated on the penultimate weekend of the season, with the 10-point deduction ultimately the difference between staying up and going down.

Looking back, Appleton had been placed in an impossible position almost from day one. He was being asked to work in the best interests of the club, which wasn’t always also in the best interests of the players financially, and yet still try and get results. “It was a surreal time,” he says. “But, honestly, it was probably the biggest and best education I’ll ever have.”

“Some players literally can’t afford to defer 25 per cent, 33 per cent, because their living costs are 80 per cent of their salaries. The one rule for all, I don’t know how that is going to work. A lot of circumstances are different. A lot of footballers are in debt. Gambling, overspending, splitting up with baby mums… There is a lot of financial instability in League One, League Two, with footballers on £2,000-£3,000 a week who just live well beyond their means.”

The agent who is talking represents players at all levels of the game and you won’t find many people in football arguing with his view that a one-size-fits-all approach to pay talks is riddled with problems. What one player saves, another player spends.

“At every club, there is a split,” the agent adds. “That will become more apparent in the next six weeks or so. No player is agreeing to it overnight. Every player is thinking long and hard about what’s best for them. Nobody really wants to commit until they know what football’s doing. There are a lot of people who simply haven’t responded to their clubs.

“The fact none of the players are together at the moment makes it easier for the clubs. There is no day-to-day chat in the dressing room. I can see some resentment happening. Nobody really knows the truth. People only have fragments at the clubs. And the picture changes every second.

“Players just don’t know what to do. They are flickering between just agreeing to a cut for the sake of their careers because they have maybe one year left, being kind to the club in the hope of getting a new deal when they can, or going against the club because they’ve been treated poorly. It’s a bit of a poker hand, really.

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“Nobody is guaranteeing that football is going to be fixed in a year’s time — so it’s how much you need your current employer, or whether it’s a good time to get out. Every player is thinking of themselves, really. There are a lot of worried people who are out of contract in June.”

Another agent strongly believes a lot of clubs in the top two tiers have “panicked” and initiated pay talks with players prematurely. “My feeling is that the clubs have gone too early, because it could be worse [later in the year]. If you look at the Championship owners, they had no football in May, June and July anyway.

“There are clubs who have done 10,000-plus season tickets and they’ve had that in, so they’ve only missed out on April [revenue], and they’ve asked players to take a pay cut or a deferral. I think they’re killing themselves. It could be worse in August and they’re not going to be getting any more money off these players then. You can’t go to them again.”

Whether clubs approach players again or not later in the year — and in theory that could easily happen — the overriding message to take away from this whole debate is the extent to which money dominates the game, right down to the way that people think and behave. At times it all feels a little desperate.

“They all know they need to play, otherwise their money is under real pressure,” the agent adds. “They’ve got appearance money, bonuses due after certain games… players will play, because they want their dough. Make no mistake, they will play because they know they’re under pressure with their contracts if the season doesn’t finish. Money talks.”

It does indeed.

(Top Photo: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)