Window lets in little light for Irish stars
January moves only emphasise O’Neill’s problems
ENGLISH soccer doesn’t help itself, but dismissing it as soulless is one of the most tiresome clichés of the age. The money generated by the Premier League is astonishing, and it counts in its ranks a number of very great fools. The tasteless, occasionally offensive deployment of their fortunes strengthens the image of a sport twisted by venality.
Those in search of a failsafe trigger for their outrage find it with the Premier League. A favoured tactic is to compare what a mid-table grunt earns in a week and calculate how many hospital beds it would pay for, as if public money was keeping the full-backs of Stoke and the fringe men at Burnley in Lamborghinis.
English soccer is rinsed with millions because people pay to watch it. Grotesque a market as it looks, it is one existing on the ancient principle of supply and demand.
Smart students of the Premier League model now predict that it is in danger of decline, and that the hundreds of millions paid for TV rights over-valued the product. If that is so, the risk of one of the great collapses in sporting history must be real.
But the signs – most obviously manifested in declining subscriptions to pay-per-view channels – are generally ignored and the Premier League clubs continue to spend. The frenzy is concentrated in two windows of Gatsbyesque indulgence, but what was interesting about the January one just passed was the reluctance of the best teams to become involved.
Instead, spending was concentrated at the mid-level clubs and below them, the sides harassed by relegation concerns. Even these relative small-fry managed to fuel a spend of £215 million, the secondhighest figure for the January window.
That is illustrative of the financial power of every Premier League club now thanks to those mammoth TV rights agreements.
THERE was an obvious Irish angle on the late spending flurries, with Robbie Brady’s £13 million transfer from Norwich to Burnley. It appears a sensible move for the midfielder, but given Burnley’s relative strength this season one wonders if he will struggle to be deployed in midfield.
Were Burnley to deploy him at left back as Martin O’Neill has in the past, Stephen Ward suffers. Jeff Hendrick is among the midfielders Brady will have to battle by if he wishes to play in his favoured part of the pitch.
Wherever Brady is settled, there are repercussions for O’Neill and Ireland ahead of a vital seven months, starting with the World Cup qualifier against Wales next month.
The effects of the January transfer sagas on O’Neill are not concentrated on Burnley, either. It appears Rafa Benitez has lapsed into irascible type and his relationship with the egregious Mike Ashley is strained. The owner of Newcastle United did not give Benitez money to spend in January, meaning the manager could not cut the deals he wanted to try and hasten their promotion back to the Premier League.
One mooted move was for James McCarthy, with Benitez said to be willing to pay £15 million for him. It would have been a good move for a player whose time as a starter at Everton cannot be long. Having to play in the Championship with Newcastle would only have been a fleeting inconvenience as they look good to win automatic promotion back to the money pit by May.
The deal never happened and McCarthy could now be looking at months scuffling around the margins of Ronald Koeman’s attentions.
An Italian international forward called Manolo Gabbiadini joined Southampton for £14 million in another agreement that threatens to have a big effect on the plans of Martin O’Neill.
A week after Shane Long was feted by Southampton supporters for his goal at Anfield, a new name arrived for big money, the kind of cash that a club like Southampton don’t spend speculatively.
If they have paid £14 million for Gabbiadini it means he will start – and that cannot be good news for Long. He started just five matches in the league before Christmas, and only seven so far this season, coming an as a substitute 12 times and scoring two goals. The form of Charlie Austin kept him out until the latter sustained a serious shoulder injury in December.
Any hopes Long might have nursed of benefiting from the misfortune of his teammate must have been banished by the arrival of Gabbiadini.
The lot of the Irish player is precarious. None feature at the best clubs, whose spending is concentrated on established stars or the shiniest young talents around the world.
The Irish in the Premier League operate in the sweep of teams that stretch from the fringes of the Champions League to the very darkest depths of relegation doom.
The problem is those clubs have millions to spend thanks to TV deals that may prove unsustainable, but for now the cheques aren’t bouncing.
Nondescript clubs in England’s shires are richer than the best in Italy and most of the rest of the world.
They can then pick off players whose arrival further squeezes the space where Ireland’s best once made their living.