I’m an ex-Premier League star who earned £20k a week in my prime… I’d be DEAD if I was handed £300k wages

NEIL ‘RAZOR’ RUDDOCK played in the Premier League for the likes of Liverpool, Tottenham and West Ham.

The 54-year-old former defender also won his solitary England cap in 1994.

Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock scooped £20k-a-week in his primeNews Group Newspapers Ltd

instagram/neilrazorruddock25Ruddock has recently shed seven stone after gastric surgery[/caption]

instagram/neilrazorruddock25Ruddock had a gastric sleeve procedure to help him slim down[/caption]

He spent five years with Liverpool, and in his prime scooped a cool £20,000-a-week wage at Anfield.

But footballers’ wages have sky-rocketed in the last 30 years, with reports suggesting the Prem’s current top earner, Kevin De Bruyne, rakes in a mind-boggling £425,000-a-week.

And Ruddock, who recently had a gastric sleeve procedure to help him slim down, admitted he would not have been able to cope on that sort of money.

He said, via the Daily Star: “If I signed a new contract [now], 300 grand a week, a three-year contract, I’d have a month and I’d go to the gaffer and say, ‘Gaff, this is not for me, I’ve had a think about, it’s not for me…’

“I bet there’s players out there who don’t want to play because football’s hard work. There must be hundreds of players out there taking a fortune.

“The last six months of my Liverpool career was one of the best six months of my life because I was getting 20 grand a week and Saturdays off. Thinking about it, what a six months that was!

“There must be hundreds of players that ain’t played 10 games that are multi-millionaires.”

Ruddock even declared he would have been “dead” if he were picking up £300k on a weekly basis.

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He continued: “In 10 years you’ll have players saying, ‘We only got 300 grand a week. How can you survive on that!’

“I’d be f***ing dead! I’d be dead if I had that.”

Ruddock recently confessed he had concerns about his health after his weight ballooned when his eating and drinking spiralled out of control.

Razor first suffered a health scare while filming an ITV show with Harry Redknapp in 2019, called Harry’s Heroes: The Full English.

He was told he was at a risk of a heart attack and needed to lose at least five stone.

So he decided to have a gastric sleeve procedure to help him slim down, and has shed seven stone thanks to the surgery.