DEADLINE DAY MILLIONS DOWN THE DRAIN?
Clubs pay way over the odds for fear of missing out to rivals
AT The end of another frantic, extravagant summer transfer window, a frank admission from one northern Premier League club executive.
‘We know we have grossly overpaid for our player,’ he said. ‘he’s not worth the amount we paid but we had to go there. If not he would have gone somewhere else.’
Welcome to the world of transfer business 2016, a world where it is a seller’s market more than ever. With an awful lot of money available to spend on a relatively small pool of genuine and available talent, the buying clubs are not in a position of strength.
Take, for example, the case of Scottish prospect Oliver Burke. The winger had been available from Nottingham Forest all summer and only a week ago he was valued at £8million when a Premier League club came calling. eventually, when that club decided it was too much to pay for a player who would have arrived as a reserve, the 19-year-old was sold to RB Leipzig in Germany for £13m amid strengthening late interest from elsewhere.
The only party that win out of that deal are Forest. Leipzig have overpaid and they know it. They will immediately be under pressure to get something tangible from their signing. Burke, meanwhile, starts life in the Bundesliga with expectation heaped high on his shoulders.
It is worth noting that the teenager — the most expensive Scottish player in history — has started just 13 first-team games in his career.
Value, of course,e, is subjective. Those ose who already laud ud the arrival of Paul l Pogba at Manchester United may wish to wait until they see the Frenchman play against someone other than Southampton and hull City y before they decide de that £ 89m wass a judicious investment. ment.
Conversely, Tottenottenham’s decision to paypay £30m for the capricious Moussa Sissoko seems risky today but if the 27-year- old brings his euro 2016 form to White hart Lane — rather than his Newcastle form of last season — then Mauricio Pochettino and his chairman Daniel Levy will not be criticised.
What has become clear over the last week or so is that those clubs who balk at the prices being asked for players will lose out in the long term unless they are cute enough to use the loan system that has become a fundamental part of the market. These days, everybody has money to spend.
It is not so long ago that United, for example, refused to be rinsed by a selling club at the negotiating table. Now their stance has changed. When the modern United need a player they — along with rivals such as City, Chelsea and Liverpool — are prepared to stretch the boundaries of what appears right in order to strengthen. The feeling is that if you don’t do it then your rivals will.
Certainly, the use of the loan system is interesting. It wasn’t so long ago that it was not permissible to loan a player from another Premier League club. If that rule was still in place it is tempting to wonder where some of the more modest top-flight clubs would be.
Stoke City manager Mark hughes made a swift and sensible summer deal to bring the midfielder Joe Allen from Liverpool for £13m but knew that his team would struggle if he couldn’t find a centre forward, always the hardest position to fill.
A flirtation with Robin van Persie led nowhere, leaving hughes to put his eggs in a basket called Saido Berahino. But Stoke knew that West Bromwich wouldn’t sell unless they could recruit a centre forward of their own.
After Saturday’s defeat at everton, Stoke sat bottom of the league and hughes was a worried man. Four days later he had judiciously given up on Berahino, taken Wilfried Bony on loan from Manchester City and everybody is happy. Apart from West Brom and Berahino perhaps.
With City no doubt subsidising some of Bony’s wages, they have had to give a little ground on the deal. But Pep Guardiola wanted the player out of the way and City are right to take the hit, another common consequencecon in an era when player wages at the totop clubs have simpsimply got too high. In these pages ttoday,o Martin Keown argues that the loan system is iin danger of being abused and he has a point. It does allow the bbig clubs to stockpile too much young tatalent, knowing thethey can farm them out across europe, and ininevitably it does prevent young english talent gettinggett a chance at some clubs. After all, why take a risk on a young lad from your academy when you can bring in somebody with experience on loan and know that, in some cases, you don’t have to pay all of his wages?
It is an imperfect system but the money that cascades through our game has made sure of that.
Further down the food chain there are worry lines on the brows of managers and chairman. The excessive wages at the top mean that players dropping down through the leagues are also paid too much, putting pressure on carefully thought-out wage structures in the Championship and below. It is an unseen by-product of all this excess.
So who has won and who has lost this time round?
Of the big clubs, United and City appear to have had decent summers while further down Stoke, Bournemouth, Burnley and Middlesbrough will be satisfied enough. As for hull, Sunderland and West Brom, it was hard to identify a clear strategy and that may cost them.