The silly money thrown around by Prem Clubs continue to amaze me. Sunderland are actually willing to pay Wolves a whopping £12m for Stephen Fletcher. Unbelievable!!! That is a massively inflated fee, especially when you consider no one else was queuing up to sign him. Fletcher hasn't shown himself to be a 20-goals plus a season striker yet he is valued at £12m? Just plain crazy. Mind you, Sunderland did receive a bonus £1m from West Ham for McCartney, who we know is not worth £1. Portsmouth are in trouble thanks to big transfer fees paid and the wages that then go with it. If Sunderland go down and Fletcher fires blanks, they will struggle to sell him for £2m. I just don't understand how clubs can do stupid deals like this, taking gambles that could well contribute to a financial collapse.
Portsmouth was an absolute joke, Last year when we wanted to sign norris we couldn't afford his wages but they could!!!
infact mate not so much carroll Downing 20 mill Henderson 18mill caused every team in the premiership to upp the price of their players and then teams in our division upped their price £5mill for Matt Mills took the piss
The bigger picture for us though, is that Wolves will have not only an extra £12m in parachute payments, but an extra £25m brought in from player sales. how the fook can we compete against that. Even Birmingham and Blackpool still have parachute payments too.
Kissa, absolutely agree, Liverpool were really foolish with their money and it showed. Parachute payments do give clubs a huge advantage, but it doesn't mean they get it right. The key is having a quality manager who spends it properly and builds a solid team. Big Sam got it right at Hammers, his capture of Nolan was exactly what they needed to drive them on. We still have hope!
Ellis short is worth $3.5bn, so I don't think there's much danger of Sunderland running out of cash, but it is a ridiculous fee.
Ellis is, Sunderland aren't! Like with the rest of the football clubs with the money men, once they pull out how are they going to pay the players? the only good thing about Ken Bates at Leeds is the fact that if he pissed off tomorrow we would still run financially sound as a football club, not many can say that.
They have been a significant carrier of the infection, but weren't the cause by any means. I'd say the blame should be: Scum 92-95: along with intro of Premier League corporate focus, they bought their first titles in the early-mid 90s. Blackburn 94-96: Jack Walker's millions raised spending to unseen levels, bought them a title. Leeds 99-02: see above, but replace Walker with Ridsdale; helped reinforce a home-made squad that realistically would probably have done about the same anyway. Chelsea 03-12: Abramovic. Nuff said. One European Cup successfully purchased along with other domestic trophies. Scum: ridiculous Ronaldo fee gave them an awful lot to reinvest, but they've spent steadily ever since pushing the bar up in the early 90s as I mentioned above. Been the most consistent offenders and damagers of the English transfer market and of English football. Liverpool 08-12: Benitez spent shocking amounts, and the Carroll/Torres saga as mentioned was responsible for a lot of unneeded fee inflation. And in the second division, Forest, Leicester and West Ham all deserve a lot of criticism for their unhealthy transfer spends over the last three seasons. Only big clubs that can really hold their heads relatively high are Leeds, Arsenal, Spurs, Villa and Everton, I think. But remember that this spending really started in Italy in the 80s and then made its way over here in the form of broadcasting rights and the lucrative TV deals Sky have consequently granted to PL clubs. FIFA should have got their fingers out decades ago to stop this problem before it got to the gargantuan level it has today.
surprised you havent mentioned man city, landfill. money is no object it seems to them. not so much transfer fees but inflating wages is the effect theyve had... it must be the first time in history that any players they sell are heavily paid off, adebayor and the like. of course the general cause for all this is the sky money. and a complete lack of regulation with regards to ownership, finances etc etc......
Oops, genuine mistake there, I totally forgot about them! I'm thinking of plotting the world transfer records from 1892-2012 on a bar chart. I suspect it will look something like: Code: / / ___________/ The increase in spending from around 1980 onwards is just shocking when you compare the relatively steady and small records that had been set before it.
remember serie A in the 90's and early 2000's? they werent half splashing the cash, £30m + was spent on several players..... each league seems to have a phase of success (fuelled by money).... and of course the new money being spent in anzhi, psg etc...... people keep saying the bubble will burst but will it? the PL is crucial to sky's business plan.....and add in (actual) competition for consumers from both established and relatively new providers like al jazeera and bt and it on the face of it waegs and fees will climb ever higher... in 2-3 years time 300k a week may be the norm for top players in this country...
Seem to remember Leeds paying a UK record transfer fee of £166000 for one Allan Clarke - now that was money well spent. Changed times.
From my brief research, Leicester had actually broken the transfer record themselves to sign him before he left for Leeds! Must have been kicking themselves to only get another 10k on top of what they'd paid Walsall.
