Gerry Sutcliffe, the sports minister, on Thursday prompted a furious response from Chelsea after singling the club out in remarks about football’s highest earners being paid “obscene” wages by teams losing touch with economic reality and their working class roots.

He singled out John Terry, the England captain who commands a salary from Chelsea of more than £130,000 a week, making him the Premier League’s highest wage-earner. Speaking at an FT sports industry conference, Mr Sutcliffe said: “It’s obscene. To be paid [about] £150,000 a week, in relation to the ordinary man in the street – people can’t understand that.” While accepting that professional sportsmen had a relatively short career, the minister said it was unsustainable for clubs such as Chelsea to be heavily in the red. “That’s not living in the real world, in my view. Fans move away from that. Fans can’t understand that level of funding.”