But it has to actually be self-sufficient to be sustainable. Merely buying a cheaper thing is not inherently more economically sensible if the cheaper thing is useless. I refer you to that seminal economic tract, the Samuel Vimes Theory of Boots: If you buy 'cheap' players that are not very good and which you need to replace after a year, that is not actually sustainable. If you buy good players who can either do fun football things or be sold for large amounts of money in order to afford other good players, that is sustainable. That's obviously reductive in that there is no guarantee that an expensive player is better than a cheap one. But wages tend to cluster; your £10m transfer from a lesser league probably isn't on that much less than your £20m transfer, and the odds of your £20m transfer coming good are (if you have any clue what you are doing whatsoever) better. Meanwhile, when you have a bunch of £10m transfers all of whom are making wages that exceed those paid by all but 30 clubs in the world, they tend to accumulate. It's far harder to undo those mistakes, even at a moderate loss. Thus, how we have a rather unusual situation: our pay scale is such that we have difficulty acquiring high-end talent, while our payroll is also obscenely bloated. Because instead of paying a few good players a lot of money, we pay a bunch of soggy cardboard a fair amount of money. Being cheap is really expensive.
‘It's not about the money, money, money We don't need your money, money, money We just wanna make the world dance Forget about the price tag Ain't about the, uh, cha-ching, cha-ching Ain't about the, yeah, ba-bling, ba-bling Wanna make the world dance Forget about the price tag’ Jessie J
We got Mane and Alderweireld on the last day of the window didn't we?! Couple of signings of that calibre and we would be laughing.
We don't even have to look that far - Danny Ings was a last minute deadline day deal and he hasn't turned out too badly! No point complaining or worrying until it is actually over - we clearly need 1 or 2 more and the club are clearly working on doing just that. At least deadline day should be entertaining for once.
of course... but in buying a player, you buy a player you think will be good. I really don’t think we pick a name out of a hat and hope that cheap player becomes good. (Not suggesting that is why you are saying) this goes both ways too.... just because a Price tag is higher, it Doesn’t always mean it is good. Often it does, but no guarantee. Edit: I missed part of your post. You said this I’ll leave this here so I can be ridiculed
I bought a pair of boots for £120 recently, from a trusted brand; so far, so great value for money. But there’s no danger of my new boots getting injured, turning out to be more interested in cars and tattoos than going hiking, or having one good season before downing tools and demanding a move to Liverpool.
Talking of philosophical footballers (and Monty Python) we have a few... Ryan Bertrand Russell Jannick Søren Vestergaard Che Adams Smith James Ward Proust Danny 'Freddy' Ingels
Players purchased for smaller sums can also turn out to be big-headed or get injured. The difference is that you're unhappy when the good players twist an ankle. And players who want to go to Liverpool is a luxury, because presumably that means that Liverpool has some interest in them, which means that they are good at football, and it means that if they leave, we actually have money with which to acquire other players, a thing we lack at the moment. I would think that "oh no, all of these world-elite players in our squad want to go play for a world-elite club" is a problem we might aspire to have again. At one point, our 'big-money' signings went to Liverpool; now we have to pay them to go to Elche.
Apparently that figure includes wage contribution - thought to be around the £6m mark. Which certainly seems more realistic.
Clear to see why we don't think it's a sensible deal. £11 Million and then he goes back next year. No thank you.
