Ferguson has come out and said it: Manchester United of all clubs have been priced out of the market. They have lost one world class player and one close to world class, and may well have to do with out Hargreaves for much if not all of the coming season, and yet they have only "invested" in Oberton, Valencia and Owen. There is no doubt that Ferguson's side will be weaker next season, even if Owen stays fit and recovers his form, but Ferguson is sitting on his hands, insisting that there is no value in the present market.
And of course he is right. How can Terry, a good centre half and nothing more, be worth £30m? How can Tevez be worth £25m after bagging only a handful of goals last season in a close to unbeatable team? How can Valencia be worth £16m? He is good but he is not THAT good. How old is Santa Cruz? £18m for a forward knocking on the door of 30 with a career injury record that compares unfavourably with Owen's, that is bloody stupid. And £17m for Glen Johnson? Bloody hell, John McDowell would fetch £10m on that basis!
Now I know City supporters will scream jealousy but that would be wide of the mark because, personally, I would be delighted to see the big 4 monopoly broken. But at what cost? Blunderland are talking silly numbers to buy dross and are in danger of spending a fortune to get relegated because of the distorted market. It is financial madness and Real Madrid and Unreal City are killing the sport if not killing the game.
So what can the middle ranking clubs do? Wait until the Real and Unreal teams have gorged themselves to the full and then step in and feed on the scraps I suppose. There could yet be a spurt of activity just before the window closes but when even Manchester United seem resigned to playing second fiddle, it has to be a worry for clubs like Tottenham, Villa, Everton and West Ham.
40 comments:
Finally a well balanced article on this blog. Your still way behind in quality compared to others.
At last, a good article from hammerfan. When eventually all clubs are bought by billionairer, theres still only three to four trophies to play for. Not everyone can win a trophy every season. Madness i tell ye.
One problem here is that the Premier League clubs have been very insular in their outlook. How come Stuttgart are about to sign Huntelaar from Madrid? How come most clubs in Europe are signing good players happily without going bust? How can Italian teams afford to buy good players? City and Madrid only want to sign may 10 or 12 players between them - there must be hundreds of others available for immediate transfer. I think a lot of Europeans have gone off the Premier League, and don't fancy coming here any more. So they all start bidding for the same players, pushing their prices up. Show some imagination, you clowns. And please don't blame City for ruining football again - such a weak thing to say. Should I announce that West Ham is a nest of criminals just because people keep making films centred on Green Street? No, see how you feel.
A bit unfair i feel, given the fact Sunderland (or Blunderland as the demented author refers to them as) have not actually spent a great deal of money to date..£3 million on Campbell and a free on Da Silva...Their reluctance to pay a crazy price for Bent suggests to me they are being canny with the cash......So mr Cockney author go and pick on someone else
as a city fan can i ask the football fans of all clubs to calm down!JT is worth 30 mil but won't join us he's the england captain and comands respect by all players and fans if he was an overseas player nobody would bat an eyelid at the price as for tevez man utd,chelsea and liverpool all offered the asking price and gareth barry is a snip at 12 mil for a current england int.
What a load of rubbish the sky four have been paying over the odds for players for years, maybe not to the same extent but they started it. The only way City can attract top players is by paying over the odds and paying top wages. If they won't to break into the top four that is what they have to do if no then all will stay as it is ,the sky four still getting top money from tv rights CLmoney etc. And that is exactly what everybody wants, but unfortunatley for them things are going to change. Oh and the reason Fergie has not bought anyone of significance is the Glaziers have had most of his £80mil to pay off thier debts.
Its true. The game has lost all innocence. Why hasnt Blatter or Platini introduced a budget cap? Thats the first thing that would certainly help.
I'm a Sunderland fan myself, and I will regret any Roy-Keane-esque transfer spending. I blame Keane for our predicament last season. He practically used us as a guinea pig to test out his crazy ideas and so-called 'talent'.
Brucie knows best! :)
Now you see, you say it's not about jealousy, yet that's ALL your little rant oozes off.
So, what you're saying is if your mickey mouse club had the funds available to it that City have, you'd still be shopping at Aldi would ya?!?
Do me a favour!
Bitter, bitter, bitter.... nothing more to say.
2038 YOU'RE still way behind in the quality of YOUR spelling compared with others.
2039, others think it is crap. What does that tell you? Something to do with personal opinions predetermining the response perhaps?
GMC, of course West Ham are a nest of criminals! Every Eastender has something that has fallen off the back of a lorry. How do you think we got Tevez?
2045, Just wait!
2046. he is 29 and has a bad back. £30m? Ludicrous!
2048 Does Double Glazing cost that much now?
SAF has had a good moan about there not being any value in the Market but at the end of the day United did sell ron for £80m. City are paying over the odds but probably have to because they want to improve their squad quickly and can't offer european football. Tevez, Barry and RSC cost less than £80m and I know Ron was truely world class but when you look at it City are just paying silly wages to bring in players they need to push on. If the top four teams can't get or keep players with the lure of champs league etc. then they must be going about things wrongly. Although I think there is more to life than money. Professional football is a career for the players and a business for the clubs and in both of these it's the money that does the talking. Everybody wants to make more money that's how it's always been, it's just a case of what you give up to to get that bit extra and if as a player you think it's worth it and can see the move progressing into someting good.
Villa fan here, As per last comment Barry seems a snip now at £12m considering Ronaldo cost £80m..i dont think Man City are wrecking the game, just like when the first Million pound transfer went through people probably felt the same. its a sign of the times, football is a business and you have to speculate to accumulate, in order to attract big players they have to pay big wages...i for one would love to have the likes of tevez at villa but he wouldnt bat an eye lid at us or Man City for that matter if it werent for the money...FACT! for anyone that says thats not true needs to see a specialist as its plain and simple...Football is now controlled by who has what spending power....
2104, surely the point is that Chelsea, Real Madrid and Man City, to name three, are NOT being run as businesses. The numbers do not stack up if you are running a business.
do not ever put The Arsenal in the same breath as tottenham, villa, west ham and sunderland. now as for the rest of your post. yes i agree, united have been humbled and are at their weakest postion since 2003-6. add to that their disgusting 800 million debt that they have weighing down on their necks and you can see it's only going to get worst for them. chelsea are finished, they are an old team on their last legs who have been left to fend for themselves by the russian don. they will go back to being a mickey mouse club with no history as soon as "mr chelsea" boy and man at the club delects to the arabs at city. as for liverpool, they are dangerous, they must forget about building a new stadium until they finaly win another title. 5 european cups do not make up for the fact that in england they have been in the wilderness for far too long for a club of their stature. they are close but building a new stadium will cripple them for years. and finaly to my club arsenal, 21st century stadium built, debt under control and declining, two billionairs in reserve if needed, which they are not at the moment and i hope will never will be. things are looking up, wenger and boulds's british legacy have just won the double, they will only get stronger and grace us at last with a team to once again sit on top of the leauge. A team built from scratch, an investment for the future which will be a proud statment from a club who do things the correct way. thanks to madrid and the arabs the title this season is wide open for the top 5...
oh, and adeanohoper is on his way to city!! the sun is shining it's a perfect day......
2107...True...i take your point...its like real life Football Manager to these Billionaires...but in the next few years this will probably be the 'norm'...
villafan
2107...i for one would love a wage cap and limited foreigners but i'm afraid it wont happen...
City have only paid over 20 million for 2 players (and one of them was last summer) in Tevez and Robinho. If Berbaflop is worth 32 then so is Robinho and Tevez is worth 25.
Blunderland?? is that from a Hammer? Hardly the stablest of clubs in the country. £3 mill for Campbell a good Eng U21 prospect and a free for Da Silva, seems good business, get back to Iceland and melt
A lot of people seem to be missing the point, its not just the transfer fee, which a good many teams can probably match, its the ridiculous high wages that we cant match. Remember once those high wages are in force they will never go down, so other players will now be looking to earn the same. The bae has been raised and everybody has to clear it now to stay in the game.
first time ive come across this site.
nice read, from a gooner ! ;)
The basic premise behind the article is correct but the insanity is not only reserved for transfer fees but also the salaries paid for mediocre playboys who have little or no professionalism or loyalty to offer to the game.
To pick on Sunderland under their new manager is a fairly fatuous argument adding absolutely nothing to the case being made by the author. Thus far we have signed on a free the captain of Paraguay voted the best player of the year admittedly not a spring chicken but a sound signing around to build with some of our younger players. The second purchase a young striker from Manchester United who is very highly thought of by a number of pundits and many of their fans. I would not pay over the top for Bent but would like to see a choice of strike force of him Jones and Crouch as the alternating pairings with say Tuncay and another as mid field strikers.
I was not enamoured with the profligate spending of Keane or his purchases and Jones himself is a lazy barsteward but let us see how Bruce performs. He has made some good sales and we are certainly looking at a better class of players but you cannot criticise overspending in one breath and then demean a club because they are unable to buy the very top overpriced players.
Why are you using Sunderland in this example, we have signed a promising striker for 3.5 million and signed a centre half for free from Mexico. Hardly silly numbers.
I think you're not only bitter about Man City, (don't try to hide it with you're 'breaking the top 4 monopoly' lies it's laughable) but you're also bitter that a club such as Sunderland, who are undoubtedly a club with a more prestigious history and a better fanbase rightly have more pulling power than West Ham.
"So Tottenham cant do business" are you mad, is this the same Tottenham that signed Palacios for over 10million, signed Defoe back after selling him for less and made a 20 million pound bid for Kenwyne Jones in January. Do you're research before writing your articles.
Re Bacon-face's comment:
1. he benefitted from this 'inflated market' by picking up £80M.
2. he can't spend any of his gains due to his owners' interest payemt requirements. He's doing a good job disguising this with a bit of blue-blame but that's the reality.
3. city will buy 6 players this window tops, that leaves about 4,000 prem squad players unaffected. Blaming us for everyone's ills pathetic. It may be that prics and wage demands are escalating but that simply can't be the fault of one prem club and one in Spain!
I don't see nothing wrong with man £ity spending like they are, but only because they're allowed to at the moment, sadly for teams like man £ity and chelsea i believe it'll come to an end, i believe football will be turned back into a sport again one day soon, whether it's the majority of your team being homegrown or having a certain budget to spend, i think it will and should happen because a sport is meant to be fairness, two or more even teams, like all other games on this planet. You'd never see a heavy weight smashing up a light weight in boxing would you.
its still a team game and 11 players locked in a concentrated effort can always out play the teams with the big names as has happened many many times - Greece winning Euro 2004 for example. Mark Hughes biggest challenge is gelling the squad with the likes of Bell-end moaning. If Hughes can pull the team together they could steal the title next season as they don't have to worry about Europe like Villa, Everton, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Man Utd. If they concentrate solely on the Premiership they could pull it off over 38 games - instead of the 50 odd the others will be faced with.
Interesting article. I think the headline says it all - you've relegated the Gunners to the also-rans. Personally, I feel that Liverpool have more to worry about than Arsenal, but whoever it is, the 'Cosy Four' are about to get a new member and one of them is going to have to drop out - with potential loss of income of around £30-40 million.
Each of the 'CF' managers has had something derogatory to say about City, and each has been given something to seriously think about - if not by actually taking players off them - or poaching players they thought were in the bag, then by disrupting players they thought were nailed on to them forever - Captain Chelsea? Yeah right!
A wage cap? Do you think the FA would ever dream of going for that when the TV money (paid to the FA for having the hottest property in the sporting world - the English Premiership) could dry up tomorrow?
City's Declaration of Intent, however you feel about it, hasn't been all bad. £30 million to English clubs so far, they've got rid of the last Third Party owners in England, and the tax man at least, is going to have a field day.
Don't get me wrong. I've been around long enough to actually like most of the teams in the whole of the Football League. All I can say is if you came into money (and I feel sorry for West Ham fans, because they thought they had), wouldn't YOU be delighted at the way things are going?
I dont know what to think, I bet SAF will be using his war chest before the deadline, anyway how can he comment when he received 80 very large for ron.......
Spurs fan here .... well we haven't seen Chelsea have it all their own way, so I think we can afford to wait and see if things settle down again over a couple of seasons.
Would be nice if UEFA injected a little sanity into the system (... from a Spurs point of view that would be - as an earlier poster said) ensuring clubs were run in a commercially reasonable way....
Unfortunately, I think the larger clubs have been paying too much attention to the banking crisis and now know that they will be bailed out for billions of pounds of the taxpayers money if they seriously look like failing.
The class system was merely replaced with a who has the money & who hasn't system and we, the poor public, keep getting tapped up on all sides by taxes or hiked ticket prices simply because we have been force-fed the cult of celebrity.
Stop giving them money, then maybe, just maybe we get some common sense back in the working mans game.
Nice debate guys
Few points though
1. How many strikers do Man City need????? Ade is not worth 25 mil ... he never was or never will be.
2. Ronaldo is not worth anywhere near 80 mil..
3. The top 4 need shaking up thats true and I am an Arsenal fan.
4. City wont be the team to do it (well this season anyway) look out for Spurs... Harry is weighing up some shrewd signings.. and no I dont hate spurs or any other team either.
5. Steve Bruce is more than capable of getting Sunderland a top 10 finish.... Roy Keane nearly cost sunderland their premier league place with his ridiculous signings paying way over the odds for average players... bruce has spent wisely thus far.
6. John terry is an average defender.
7. If Glenn Johnson is worth the reported 17 mil that was paid for him.... how much are decent footballers worth... id have expected change from 5 mil
8. Barry is not motivated by anything other than money.
9. If u believe reports that Jose Antonio Reyes id joining Everton... I pity Everton fans
10. Arsenal need a ball winner to contend for the title
11. Nice to read all the posts. Some very good points raised and no real slagging matches..just open and honest debate
12. Its my first time on here but i will be on again
13. I have very strange views on football and music lol
14. Funny feelin that Alex is tellin porkies... personally I reckon he will sign at least 1 more player
15. There needs to be something done about both transfer fees and wages...caps would be appropriate for both
16. It is against European law to limit the number of Foreigners plying their trade in the premier league.... Outside the European union maybe but players from member states have the right to play in any other member states league
17. Enough from me im ranting.
18. I will discover how to set up an account on this and i will be back with more rantings...just to annoy you all and will be known as Irishgooner lol.
Bye for now take care and keep up the good work....
Irishgooner
Understand your little frustrated being a hammers fan. But why use Sunderland in your rant we have sold Chopra for 4 million Halford 2 million and looks like Murphy for 2.5 million to hull. We have only spent 3.5 on Campbell and da silva for free, so that makes us a profit of 5 million??????
Good article... but I must say I don't know if I totally agree. Over the last few years I have watched my club Spurs spend 200 odd million on dross crappy players... so I think to blame Citeh is a little unfair. As to the Citeh fan who said calm down, it is not really in my opinion the fees that are the problem but the salaries... If I was an unemployed Citeh fan looking at these absolutely ridiculous salaries I would be pissed off... You've got a rich Saudi owner who could easily afford to reduce your season ticket prices and help the fans out, rather than paying players like John Terry £200,000 a week!!
u city fans make me laugh,u have some money now u think u r big,u have won nothing and wont in the next 2 yrs either.
when was the lastime man city won anything.and they wont next yr either
Some short short memories. Let's not forget that it was Ferguson himself who blew over 28 million on Veron back in 2001. That's two years before Abramovic came in and 'ruined' football and a full seven years before ADUG came in and did the same. Over blown prices? Maybe but it didn't start this year...
Why have you included West Ham in this discussion? in terms of transfer market funds they are way behind Spurs, Sunderland, Villa etc, in fact probably behind most clubs. Must be hard to take after thinking you were destined for a top 4 place after signing tevez and masch. a few seasons back. i remember your fans on sky telling man utd to wach out as your coming lol.
I wouldn't listen to what that tosser Fergie has to say, sour grapes, when he has the money he also spends ridiculously inflated prices for player's, Ferdinand, 30 mill ten years ago, ridiculous, Berbatov, 32 mill last year and haha he's been absolute tosh, ridiculous, Go for it City.
Spursdude.
Cheers for all the contributions. Irishgooner, and others, if you fancy submitting a headliner article, just use the email addy shown. You can trigger / lead a debate.
Where do I start on this one, eh? Firstly, that dopey arab is destroying the beautiful game by paying out over inflated prices for players thus over inflating the transfer market just so he can field a dream team to satisfy his over inflated ego. Secondly, it would appear that Sparky is doing a Morinho by trying to buy up as many players as possible so no one else can have them, I mean, they have eight strikers already and now they want to buy Adebayor, when they don't really need him as they already have Tevez, Robinho, Santa Cruz, Bellamy, Cascido, etc, etc, so that would mean that players bought for millions and millions would spend at least half of their City career bench warming, FIFA should step in and enforce some sort of rule against that sort of thing for the benefit of the game as a whole. Lastly, although Bellamy is a much hated figure with West Ham fans, but that pure hatred only manifested because of the way that he and his duplicitous agent engineered his move to City with all that crap about him wanting to join Tottscum, but it would appear that only half a season and a hand full of games, Sparky is now prepared to off load him to make way for Adebayor as the rumour mill suggests and although half of me thinks that Bell-end would be getting a well due comeuppance, the other half of me thinks, hang on a minute, Mark bloody Hughes took all of that trouble to get Bellamy to sign for City just to discard him after six or seven months when we had long term plans for Bellamy in which whether you like it or not, his departure screwed up our season because had he stayed with us, we wouldn't have been so inept in front of goal and that does now make me feel quite angry as I am starting to hate Mark Hughes more and more and would be LMFAO if it all went tits up at City and that's not because of any feelings of jealousy, it just that certain types of behaviour that run the risk of ruining the beautiful game annoy me.
I do believe the transfer market is getting ridiculous. Not just on fees but also on wages.
How can a greasy haired diving tool be worth £80M?
How can Terry be worth £250,000 a week.
Its a joke.
The gap is only gonna get bigger between the big clubs and the smaller clubs (unless an arab buys you that is).
its not a big problem, once city fail to qualify for the champions league, we can all cash in on the mass exodus as transfer requests fly in from all their best players, who will then become available for a fraction of the price city paid
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