How much Steven Gerrard earned in Saudi as Burnley plot move to replace Scott Parker | OneFootball

Burnley reportedly may want Steven Gerrard as a replacement for Scott Parker, but the Liverpool legend will have to take a wage cut at Turf Moor.

Burnley are reported to be interested in Steven Gerrard as a replacement for Scott Parker, but the former Liverpool legend will have to take quite a pay cut from his last job to head to Turf Moor.

Relegation from the Premier League comes at a cost. For clubs, it means an instant reduction in commercial and broadcasting revenues, for players it can mean a substantial pay cut, if it's written into their contracts, and for managers it often means the sack.

It would be a stretch to say that Burnley's 2025-26 relegation was a shock. A run of one win in 25 League matches has confirmed that they will be returning to the Championship next season, and there is already widespread speculation that manager Scott Parker will be leaving the club at the end of this season, despite having masterminded their promotion at the end of last season.

Journalist Alan Nixon has reported that Parker is set to leave Turf Moor at the end of the season, and that one name that has caught the attention of the club's hierarchy as a potential replacement is the former Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard, whose managerial career has already taken in Aston Villa, Rangers, and Al-Ettifaq in Saudi Arabia.

What Steven Gerrard earned in Saudi manager job - it was a fortune

Steven Gerrard was a very high-profile player, and his first two managerial jobs were also at big clubs, with Aston Villa in the Premier League and then Rangers in the SPFL. But it's his earnings while managing Al-Ettifaq that really catch the eye.

First hired there in July 2023, he signed an extension to 2027 the following January, but left the club by mutual consent in January 2025 with them having won just five of their 17 league matches all season, which left them just five points above the relegation places in the Saudi Pro League.

However, he was well renumerated while he was in the Middle East.

Upon his departure from the club, the BBC reported that he was on £15 million a year while in Saudi Arabia, which amounts to a mammoth £288,000 per week - an amount of money that would have made him among the highest-paid managers or head coaches in England.

Gerrard's Saudi adventure only lasted 18 months, but he would have become a much richer man with that short stint in the Middle East.

Steven Gerrard would be risk for Burnley - and not even necessarily in a financial sense

The money poured into the Saudi Pro League certainly had a distorting effect on the perception of wages for both players and coaches for a while.

With seemingly limitless money behind them, Saudi clubs spent a couple of transfer windows throwing money around like confetti, leading to appointments such as that which took Steven Gerrard to Al-Ettifaq.

It is more or less certain that Gerrard would receive only a small fraction of his Saudi earnings at Burnley, whether they were in the Premier League or the Championship next season.

£15 million-a-year equates to just short of £300,000-a-week, and according to estimates only Pep Guardiola, who is arguably the defining head coach of his generation, makes more than that. Scott Parker's annual wage, in comparison, is estimated at £1.6 million, which is a somewhat more manageable £31,000-a-week.

To a point, Burnley's fortunes have put the club in a tricky spot. Parker is good at getting teams out of the Championship. Last season's promotion with Burnley was the third time he'd managed it as a manager, having also done so with Fulham and Bournemouth.

The problem with Parker is what happens to his teams when they get into the Premier League. At Fulham, his team was relegated back at the first attempt, and he left by mutual consent the following summer.

At Bournemouth, he was sacked just four games into their new Premier League season following promotion, after losing 9-0 at Liverpool. And Burnley's promotion has been followed by them getting relegated back with four games to spare.

But Steven Gerrard would be a risk for the Burnley ownership.

He's never managed in the Championship before, and his spells at both Aston Villa and Al-Ettifaq were mixed, to say the least. But he does also remain the only Rangers manager to have lifted the SPFL title in the last decade and a half, and his 2020-21 team had an unbeaten season in that division.

Alan Nixon's report suggests that the Burnley owner Alan Pace has been impressed by Gerrard's "charisma", but whether this will be enough to take the club back to the Premier League is an extremely open question.