HG Tax plays a large part in some of those fees, ditto the £40m for Archie Gray (even if we clawed some of that back with Rodon headed their way) Don't forget that Bournemouth paid £19m for Solanke five years ago, back when £19m was enough to sign a first-choice player for most PL teams as opposed to now where it is enough to sign a reserve goalkeeper
Even with HG tax it’s still extortionate and that’s the problem. Solanke’s should’ve been around £45m-£50m, as he’s probably a £35m calibre striker. Johnson around £30m as he’s around a £20m calibre winger. Richarlison without any HG tax is at best a £20m striker. The Gray fee can at least be explained for investing in what will hopefully be a long term asset as well as being an exceptionally gifted young player. If you get 7-8 years of Gray at the club the £40m will have been peanuts. Equally we could only get 2-3 years out of him and then receive a £100m bid from City or someone similar. I have less issues paying a bit extra for what is deemed elite young talent than I do on players whose ceilings are already clear to see and are simply being overpaid for.
I've only got it from 2005 as the Deloitte Revenue info is hard to find before then. Some of the data is from Wiki but it looks like a cut and paste of the Deloitte report so is probably accurate. I hadn't updated this for a couple of years and the two averages are now identical! league position 5.45 9 5 5 11 8 4 5 4 5 6 5 3 2 3 4 6 7 4 8 5 revenue position 5.45 6 6 6 5 5 5 6 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 4 5 5 5 4
It isn't extortionate given Chelsea single-handedly distorted the global transfer market ever since Todd Bollo bought the club, so factor that in along with HG Tax and we paid the going rate Or to put it another way, buying an English striker for less than what Man Utd paid for Harry Maguire is not extortionate
Utd horrifically overpaying for Maguire doesn’t mean us signing a player for less still isn’t overpaying. £175m spent on Johnson, Richarlison and Solanke is severely overpaying. Because that figure on three players should be bringing you game changers. Instead all we’ve gotten is one ‘decent’ player from it. We’ll be making a terrible loss on one of them whenever they depart too, if they ever depart that is.
It does mean we didn't overpay Strikers tend to cost more than CBs Also we technically paid more for Richarlison
We did overpay. The easiest way to prove that too is if we sold all three this window, we wouldn’t recoup the £175m. Though I’d like to point out I wouldn’t want to sell Solanke, I’ve been impressed at times with him, even if he’s not worth £65m. Though I’d happily cash in on the other two and take what we can get then move on.
Wage bill as % of revenue is a good measure of club health. The clubs doing ok on-pitch and run as "business of own account" often seem to have around 60% .
We did not overpay. The easiest way to prove that we did not overpay is to look at Solanke's passport, notice the nationality, and then look for examples of players whose passports read the same yet clubs paid significantly more for significantly less, which Harry Maguire is the most obvious example of
I think you need to look at the last 5 years - effectively from the new stadium massively impacting revenues. That period is somewhat less impressive as the league position average is 6 and the revenue position at 4.6. That indicates a significant decline in on-field/revenue performance surely?
It also coincides with Arsenal and Chelsea massively overspending against their revenue so our position above them in the wealth table hasn't really helped. So I don’t think it is significant. They can't keep that up.
So as I said, the % is the issue - not the absolute value. A few years ago I saw that Spurs and Man Utd had a season where the % was close to 50% (surprising for the latter given they were the recent empire) .
Except we didn't overpay for Solanke, we paid the going rate for a HG striker in a distorted market Also, your criteria for overpaying simply doesn't work, given we broke even on Barren Dent and Paulinho
