Even Wolves can splash out crazy money
Wanderers were a big club once. Champions of England three times in the 1950s. In the days when the legendary Billy Wright was the captain, Celtic invited them to open the first Parkhead floodlights. Since the halcyon days of 1959, Wolves have become a yoyo club, out of step with the modern era. Last season, they mustered a 14th place in the English Championship. They were never going down. But they were never going up either. All of which makes the transfer news from midweek eye-boggling. Wolves are set to smash their transfer record by signing Benfica striker Anderson Talisca for £21million. The highest fee ever paid by a Championship club, here is more evidence that the game down south — buoyed by ludicrous sums from television — has officially jumped the shark. Mark Warburton says Rangers can barely compete with clubs in England’s League One. English football has lost the plot. In a world of rolling 24-hour news headlines, ridiculous headlines struggle to retain impact. English clubs buy another player for £50m and nobody raises an eyebrow. Last week, Manchester United paid close to £100m to re-sign a player they once allowed to leave for nothing. Paul Pogba is potentially one of the top three players in the world. But his signing was announced in a glitzy rap video released by a sports company in the middle of the night to tie in with the lucrative Asian and American markets. Pogba will reportedly earn £290,000 a week, which amounts to more than £15m a year. The average fan earning £27,600 per annum would take some 546 years to earn that sum. When the Premier League returns today, obscenities like this will be described as a ‘good thing’. Match Of The Day will be back and Pogba and Zlatan will facilitate another season of overblown hype. No one will care any more that England lost to Iceland at Euro 2016. And no one will ask why the hell are Wolves buying £21m Brazilians?