Overspending on mediocre players must stop before it kills the game

THIS is madness – when a single footballer is more expensive than building a hospital or school, the transfer market has lost its marbles.

The numbers flying around this summer have been ridiculous and football, the people’s game, is in danger of becoming estranged from its lifeblood: the fans who pay to watch it.

Neymar, £198million? He may not even have been among Barcelona’s top three players, if Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez or Andres Iniesta floats your boat more.

Is Neymar (right) really worth £108m more than Paul Pogba, who was previously the most expensive player on the planet?

Andre Gray, £18m? Good luck to him at Watford, but that’s a lot for a guy who has only scored nine Premier League goals in his career.

Kyle Walker, £50m? He has been one of England’s best players in recent internationals, but for that money you would expect the best defender in the world – and he’s not.

I can just about remember Trevor Francis (right) becoming the first £1m footballer in Britain, in 1979. Even allowing for inflation over the last 38 years, Neymar is not worth 198 Trevors, nor 100, nor a dozen. I’m not even sure he’s a better player, full stop. I have always been an advocate of market forces and players being paid whatever clubs are prepared to pay them. But when you compare some of the figures from when I set out as an apprentice at Manchester United 25 years ago, you can see how much football is in danger of running away with itself. In 1992, kids like me on £29.50 a week would be in awe of someone like Bryan Robson, a legend and captain at one of the biggest clubs in Europe, who would be on around £5,000-£10,000 a week. Fast-forward 10 years, and average players like myself (do not adjust your glasses: I repeat, average) were earning seven-figure contracts, upwards of £20,000 a week. But now you have bang-average players – of whom there are plenty – on £50,000-£100,000 a week, and it’s simply not sustainable. You can be on £10,000 a week at a Premier League club and only have to play 10-15 good games in a row to earn 10 times as much. Where you used to need one or two good seasons to command big money, now it’s all about instant gratification.

We’ve gone from topclass players earning their corn at the highest level to clubs paying way over the odds, because they are either desperate to stay in the Premier League or get into Europe.

Value for money seems to have become an optional extra, not standard factory settings.

Some people think transfer expenditure in English football is NOT excessive because if you are going to hand clubs £100m of TV money, they will find ways of spending it.

But to the ordinary man in the street – workers on minimum wage – transfer fees have gone too far. And where is it going to stop?

Good luck to every player whose wage demands are met. It’s a short career.

But just as you don’t mind paying Daniel Craig top dollar to make a James Bond film, or paying Adele the earth to make an album, I have no problem with matchwinners being paid big money.

You don’t mind shelling out to watch Messi, Ronaldo, Aguero or Suarez on top form. But overpaying for mediocrity has to stop – before it kills football.