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Tim Sherwood enjoyed a long and successful career as a Premier League midfielder
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His two spells as a top-flight manager have been short but eventful
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Two decades at the top and punditry work have made him very wealthy
Timothy Alan Sherwood was born in St Albans, Hertfordshire on 6th February, 1969.
A football obsessive from the get-go, he showed sufficient promise to be snapped up by Watford’s youth academy going on to make his professional debut for the Hornets aged just 18.
A well-regarded and largely successful career followed with Sherwood making just shy of 500 appearances for six different clubs, leaving three on good terms, the others in more acrimonious circumstances.
Our latest football transfer odds reveal such bitter parting of the ways is still commonplace today.
On drawing a close to nearly two decades of competitive action, Sherwood entered club management, taking the reins at Tottenham and Aston Villa for a season apiece, always wearing a gilet waistcoat on matchdays, an item of clothing that soon became a trademark of sorts, gaining him widespread attention.
He is now a pundit, airing his thoughts on the game across numerous platforms. All of which has made Tim Sherwood a well-known figure in the game in addition to being a very wealthy man.
How much is Tim Sherwood worth?
The 53-year-old has a reported wealth of £1.5m though this is an extremely conservative estimate given that he played the bulk of his career during a period when football’s popularity exploded leading to players being lavished with enormous riches.
The average wage of a top-flight footballer in 1992, the year of the Premier League’s founding, was £77,000 and this was the same season when Sherwood signed for ambitious Blackburn, being awarded a bumper contract and the captaincy too.
The latter detail is pertinent as his greater status would have unquestionably resulted in individual sponsorship deals and better earning power.
By 2002/03, the player’s swansong campaign in the Premier League, the average wage had sharply increased to £611,000.
Such considerable income afforded a five-bedroom house in Berkhamsted, an area where property prices are considerably above the national average while Sherwood drives a luxury 4x4 that seems to be obligatory these days for footballers and managers alike.
Beyond the training ground and TV studios, he is a director of a limited company that he runs alongside his wife, Mia.
Managerial rewards
Sherwood’s salary on taking charge at Spurs in 2013 varies according to different sources, with some putting the figure at £1m per year, while others suggest it was double that.
Anyone who indulges in football bets will know that nothing is ever straightforward when it comes to Tottenham.
What is more certain is that he was remunerated to the tune of £2m per year when later at the helm in the Midlands, leading Aston Villa to a FA Cup final in 2015 and keeping them safe from the clutches of relegation.
This is public knowledge because Sherwood’s compensation package on being sacked was the equivalent of a year’s salary and the fired gaffer walked away with a cool couple of million.
In 2020 it was revealed that QPR made enquiries about his availability. Sherwood reputedly asked for £1m per year from the Championship side.
Since finding managerial jobs harder to come by, the sometimes outspoken figure has turned to punditry, commentating on topical matters for Talksport, Al-Jazeera Sport, and Amazon Prime among others.
While these are well-paid commitments, they are done in a freelance capacity therefore exact figures remain unknown.
Family Life
Sherwood met his future wife Mia at the height of his footballing fame in the Nineties and they remain happily together nearly thirty years on.
They have raised four daughters in the stable environment of a family home the player purchased on leaving Blackburn for Tottenham in 1999, a move that came about because Sherwood wanted to return to his roots in Hertfordshire.
What presumably keeps him grounded is that nobody else in the family unit has any particular interest in football.
In 2015, with Aston Villa set to face Liverpool in a FA Cup semi-final, Sherwood revealed his youngest daughter wanted the Villans to lose because a foreign holiday had previously been booked and she wanted to go swimming.
To further illustrate how detached his personal life is from his professional adventures, Mia has only watched her husband play on eight or so occasions, claiming to be forced to go each time.
On initially meeting, Sherwood pretended he was an artist, not a footballer, his fib only unravelling when Mia asked that he draw her.
Playing career
An all-action, box-to-box midfielder with an eye for a pass, Sherwood first made his mark at Watford before bigger clubs inevitably came calling.
First there was Norwich, who back then resided in the top division as they do now. Sadly, our Premier League predictions tip the Canaries to slip from their perch once again this season.
His stint in East Anglia was followed by lengthier spells at Blackburn Rovers and Tottenham before a long and impressive career was wound down at Portsmouth and Coventry.
By the time he hung up his boots in 2005, the Premier League star boasted a league winners medal with Blackburn, excelling that season to such an extent that he was included in the PFA Team of the Year.
He also enjoyed promotion from the Championship with Portsmouth. International recognition meanwhile accompanied his rise, with three England caps all gained in 1999.
Banter
Since joining the long queue of football managers out of work Sherwood has carved out a path in punditry, often finding himself the butt of online jokes for his somewhat leftfield opinions.
Recently he came under flak from Newcastle supporters for staunchly defending his friend Steve Bruce and furthermore suggesting the problem lay with the fans.
On a more light-hearted note, the retired midfield ace succumbed to the dreaded curse of the commentator when covering a Tottenham game at Anfield in 2020.
With Liverpool about to take a corner in the final minute, Sherwood insisted he wasn’t worried because the visitors had been dominant at set-pieces all afternoon. Reds striker Roberto Firmino promptly headed home.
To his enormous credit, the former England star typically takes any derision in his stride and has even been known to instigate the attention.
In 2014, with his struggling Spurs side cruising to a rare victory, Sherwood invited a vocal fan to take his place in the dug-out, even loaning his stunned critic his prized gilet jacket. It was, he said later, ‘just good banter’.
Premier League odds suggest Sherwood’s ex-club may no longer be offering much banter to rival fans since Spurs have improved under new boss Antonio Conte.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to AP Photo*
FIRST PUBLISHED: 23rd March 2022
