It currently stands at £16.5m for Didier Ndong and whilst I know the likes of Asamoah Gyan, Darren Bent, Rodwell etc all were close in terms of the final fee, I'm interested in knowing the transfer fee progression over time. As a kid I remember signing Alex Rae for £1m which broke our record at the time, which I think was David Kelly from Wolves for £900,000, the season earlier. I also think Craig Gordon for £9m was our record for a while. Any specific memories of us spending big relative to the time?
I couldnt understand why we bought Chris Turner at the time. What do I know. Paul Butler was one I said was way too much. About a million quid I think. Canny play mind and was worth the dosh. How much did we pay to get Gates? That was a bit of a coup then.
I think it was: Don Goodman (pre-Reid £850,000) David Kelly £900,000 Alex Rae £1m Niall Quinn £1.1m Lee Clark £2.5m Stefan Schwarz £4m Emerson Thome £4.5m Tore Andre Flo £8m I think the Flo record (2002) stood until we signed Craig Gordon (2007), Ndong's record has now stood for 8 years.
The Ndong fee hides the fact we spent something like £8-9m on Djilobodji that season. Horrendous player. I was never a big Fletcher fan, not sure he was worth the fee we paid. He did give us some good moments though.
We broke the British transfer record twice in the late 40s/early 50s. £18,000 for Ivor Broadis in 1948 was a huge fee at the time but we spent £20,500 on Len Shackleton and the £30,000 on Trevor Ford. The days of the Bank of England Club are long gone though.
A lot of players signed around the Fletcher time we signed for big fees and we allowed them to play out their contracts and leave on frees, Fletcher and Gardner are examples and there are quite a few more.
Yes. The lack of player sales despite spending a truck load of money is probably what lead to us being in league one.
At the time, the Don Goodman signing was always reported as £900,000. I don't believe Kelly was a record signing.
Got no idea of players years etc , but sure it was once stated that we were once one of only three clubs in the world who had had both a world record buy and a world record sale.
Fletcher and Johnson were both signed on the same day for a combined £20m+ Both left on frees. Cost the football club a lot of money when you take the big wages into account too.
Currently we are showing big money is not the only way to secure first time talent. Ballard, Hume, Cirkin, Clarke, Mundle, Jobe, Mayenda all look great deals at low prices. Even better we have a conveyor belt of academy talent. Patto, Neil, Rigg would cost more than £40m to buy in January should we need to. Look down the pecking order and we have Johnson, Bainbridge, Watson. I would much rather watch Watson come through, and be patient, than blow £10m on someone ready to go.
Agreed mate. I also would add I don't think we have ever been very attractive to players that are ready to go. So we had to pay over the odds and generally didn't get any value for our money! Buying players who are ready to start playing but haven't had the chance with parent clubs is great value so far! We have hardly ever sold a player for profit in the last 20 plus years but we have done it twice under this new way and we could do that across the whole team!
Will be interesting to see how we spend if we get into the Premier league. I'd imagine that we'd buy an even better calibre of young player.
