The only thing more vulgar than talking about money is talking about Wayne Rooney’s money. But this column has never been shy of tackling the unpleasant issues. So here we go.

Soon after you read this, Rooney should have signed a new contract at Manchester United, paying him about £300,000 a week for the next five and a half years. Now, I know, it feels a bit like Rooney is always getting a pay rise — the only difference now being that he hasn’t threatened to leave for one of his club’s direct rivals in the last few weeks. But, hey, when you’re a top Premier League star, every day is payday.

Still, though, three hundred grand a week? It has caused a bit of head-scratching, not least because the news of Rooney’s prospective wage hike came a few days after the death of Sir Tom Finney — the greatest Englishman of all time, if you believe the greybeards who saw him.

In his heyday during the early 1950s Finney was on fourteen quid a week at Preston. Of course, times have changed — and I’m quite sure that if Finney, or Sir Stanley Matthews, or whoever, were 28 and at the top of their game today, they’d be earning six figures every seven days as well.

All the same, I heard several people over the weekend describe earnings of £300,000-a-week for playing football as “immoral”. And that is something we ought to pause to consider.

The idea that there is something essentially unethical about paying talented people lots of dosh for doing a job that generates lots of money has always struck me as odd — and in this case, especially so.

Unlike the pariah bankers, we cannot accuse Premier League footballers of drawing monstrous salaries despite having crashed the world economy. (Although I’m sure next time I open the New Statesman, I’ll see Laurie Penny or Russell Brand giving it a good go).

The fashionable comparison to make nowadays is between footballers and Hollywood stars. If Rooney is set to draw £15million or so a year (and another few mill in endorsements, etc) then that puts him in the same bracket as someone like Tom Cruise.

According to Forbes, Cruise earns about £20m a year. Would you rather spend 90 minutes of your life watching Rooney booting a football around, or Cruise doing his ‘intense running face’ and ‘bulgy-eyed distress face’ in Mission Intolerable 11? I know what my preference would be.

Aha, I hear you say, but there’s a difference. For while the pay of the best movie stars may be equally handsome as that of top footballers, it doesn’t cost sixty or seventy quid a time to go and watch a film. It does, however, cost something like that to see Wayne Rooney play live. Ticket prices in English football have been rocketing in recent years — surely, if we paid players less, the game would become more affordable?

This is a bit of a canard. A quick glance over Manchester United’s most recent financial statements shows that ‘matchday’ revenue (ie, takings at Old Trafford) was £109m in 2013. This was just 27 per cent of their total revenue of £393m, and the percentage is falling fast.

This is important. Clubs like United are not becoming wealthier because of ticket-price inflation. Their cash cows are TV deals and commercial partnerships — kit sponsorship deals, official Far Eastern potato snack supplier contracts and so on.

This is where the money comes from to pay players like Rooney wages in the order of £300,000 a week. And it is silly to think that clubs would do anything else. The financial performance of the biggest clubs is a matter of public record. Rooney’s advisors can see that United’s revenues should total about £2bn over the next five and a half years. That revenue depends on having talented, world famous players on their books. They know, and the clubs know, that in the grand scheme of things Rooney’s £80m payday is basically chicken feed.

Grotesque? Maybe. But the fact is that so long as the biggest clubs in Europe continue to be rich and successful, the players will want their slice of the pie. We might wish that teachers and nurses and carers and chimney sweeps were afforded the same sort of reward for doing a hard and socially valuable job. But that’s market economics for you. And of the many things we can blame on Wayne Rooney, that isn’t one.

Deaths show folly of Qatar World Cup

It would appear that the human cost of the Qatar 2022 World Cup now extends to the lives of 400 Nepalis whom, according to a report, have died on building sites since the tournament bid was won four years ago. This will carry on rising, no matter how much we all throw our hands up and wail about the terrible human rights situation in the emirate. If death and misery is the price of doing business there, FIFA should have considered this before awarding Qatar this ridiculous World Cup.

Maybe we’re not as bad as we thought

Watching Mitchell Johnson demolish South Africa at Centurion was a confusing experience. His figures of 12-127 confirmed he is the real deal — far and away the best bowler in the world right now, and a man who can win cricket matches on his own. But it also makes us worry: were England really as godawful in the Ashes as we have thought? And if not, then has everything that has followed maybe been just a teeny-tiny bit over the top?

Joshua’s our only heavyweight hope

No surprises to see that both Tyson Fury and Dereck Chisora eased through their fights at the Copper Box last weekend. And the build-up to their inevitable summer rematch has begun, with Fury calling Chisora ‘one-paced’ and a ‘bum’. But what of the future beyond that? I can’t see either troubling Wladimir Klitschko for a world belt. With David Haye retired, the future of British heavyweight boxing at the world level probably lies elsewhere. Let’s hope Anthony Joshua comes good.

England’s Cole has been a mine of gold

Dan Cole's neck injury, which will keep him out of the rest of the Six Nations, is a real loss for England at a time when they needed it least. In an age when tight-head is becoming a 60-minute, part-time position, Cole is one of the few props able to blast through a full game at maximum intensity. Ireland and Wales — England’s next opponents — will both be encouraged to see England line up at Twickenham without him.