Post by QPR Report on Feb 7, 2009 8:11:03 GMT
An interesting, interesting topic; and one mentioned previously re how QPR now do things (as opposed to the old days)
Rob Smyth/The Guardian - Top-flight managers turn their nose up at lower-league bargains
Why did so few players from the Championship and below move to the Premier League in the January transfer window?
A recognisable face is a crucial part of advertising. When you see Iggy Pop, for example, you think of a once proud punk warrior who is now a risible sell-ou- sorry, you think of Swiftcover car insurance. When you see Clémence Poésy, you think of a new fragrance from Chloé. And when you see Tim Cahill, you think of that which he unofficially advertises: the lower-league bargain.
Cahill was omnipresent throughout January for Everton, with goals in three consecutive games against Liverpool and Arsenal, yet few Premier League managers took the hint and went shopping in the lower tiers, where David Moyes got Cahill from Millwall for £1.5m in the summer of 2004. There were only really four transfers of note from the Football League to the Premier League: Wolves' Mark Davies to Bolton, Derby's Giles Barnes to Fulham, Sheffield United's James Beattie to Stoke, and Crystal Palace's Ben Watson to Wigan.
Of those, Beattie was an established top-flight player and Barnes is generally recognised as a player with Premier League ability; only Watson and Davies could be said to represent gambles, and with reported fees of £2m and £1m those gambles are not great. Yet the days of taking a punt on a second-tier player seem to be dying. Some managers need to clean their transfer window so that they can see out of all of it.
The days of picking up almost entire title-winning squads from the lower leagues, as Everton and Liverpool did in the 1980s, are surely gone, due to the concentration of talent in English football and the game's globalisastion. But Cahill and his Everton team-mates Joleon Lescott and, in a sense, Phil Jagielka show that high-class players can be found in the Championship. An equivalent player will be cheaper abroad, but there are significant advantages to buying British: all the really successful Premier League sides have had a British core, with even the success of France FC, also known as Arsenal, between 2001 and 2004 arguably facilitated by the purchase of Sol Campbell.
The biggest concern for a manager, inevitably, is the player's quality. In the past a scout who spotted a potential star in the lower leagues would have kept quiet, thanked his lucky stars and got the deal done quicksmart; now, in an age of saturation, there might be a nagging voice saying: 'What's the catch? If he's so good, why has nobody else bought him?' If you saw a Diesel coat in TK Maxx for a tenner, you'd probably feel the same. "It's a gamble because the gap between the Premier League and the Championship is getting bigger and bigger," said Gary Megson, who bought Davies from Wolves and put him into his first team against Spurs last weekend. "But there are players who are capable of making that step up."
There were also reported bids for the likes of Joe Ledley, Stephen Hunt and Fabian Delph, and the reluctance of Cardiff, Reading and Leeds to sell their star players mid-season is entirely understandable: promotion will provide so much more financially than even a generous offer for one of these players. "I'm going to be in the pub tomorrow, where you can't get any phone reception, so I don't expect a great deal happening," said Steve Coppell ahead of the window's final day.
That is the alternative view; that there is still much demand for these players, but that supply inevitably diminishes in January, because the Championship is invariably so squeezed that every side still has something to play for. By the start of next season, the location of the likes of Ledley, Hunt and Delph will give us a much greater indication of market trends.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/feb/06/football-league-transfer-window-inactivity
Rob Smyth/The Guardian - Top-flight managers turn their nose up at lower-league bargains
Why did so few players from the Championship and below move to the Premier League in the January transfer window?
A recognisable face is a crucial part of advertising. When you see Iggy Pop, for example, you think of a once proud punk warrior who is now a risible sell-ou- sorry, you think of Swiftcover car insurance. When you see Clémence Poésy, you think of a new fragrance from Chloé. And when you see Tim Cahill, you think of that which he unofficially advertises: the lower-league bargain.
Cahill was omnipresent throughout January for Everton, with goals in three consecutive games against Liverpool and Arsenal, yet few Premier League managers took the hint and went shopping in the lower tiers, where David Moyes got Cahill from Millwall for £1.5m in the summer of 2004. There were only really four transfers of note from the Football League to the Premier League: Wolves' Mark Davies to Bolton, Derby's Giles Barnes to Fulham, Sheffield United's James Beattie to Stoke, and Crystal Palace's Ben Watson to Wigan.
Of those, Beattie was an established top-flight player and Barnes is generally recognised as a player with Premier League ability; only Watson and Davies could be said to represent gambles, and with reported fees of £2m and £1m those gambles are not great. Yet the days of taking a punt on a second-tier player seem to be dying. Some managers need to clean their transfer window so that they can see out of all of it.
The days of picking up almost entire title-winning squads from the lower leagues, as Everton and Liverpool did in the 1980s, are surely gone, due to the concentration of talent in English football and the game's globalisastion. But Cahill and his Everton team-mates Joleon Lescott and, in a sense, Phil Jagielka show that high-class players can be found in the Championship. An equivalent player will be cheaper abroad, but there are significant advantages to buying British: all the really successful Premier League sides have had a British core, with even the success of France FC, also known as Arsenal, between 2001 and 2004 arguably facilitated by the purchase of Sol Campbell.
The biggest concern for a manager, inevitably, is the player's quality. In the past a scout who spotted a potential star in the lower leagues would have kept quiet, thanked his lucky stars and got the deal done quicksmart; now, in an age of saturation, there might be a nagging voice saying: 'What's the catch? If he's so good, why has nobody else bought him?' If you saw a Diesel coat in TK Maxx for a tenner, you'd probably feel the same. "It's a gamble because the gap between the Premier League and the Championship is getting bigger and bigger," said Gary Megson, who bought Davies from Wolves and put him into his first team against Spurs last weekend. "But there are players who are capable of making that step up."
There were also reported bids for the likes of Joe Ledley, Stephen Hunt and Fabian Delph, and the reluctance of Cardiff, Reading and Leeds to sell their star players mid-season is entirely understandable: promotion will provide so much more financially than even a generous offer for one of these players. "I'm going to be in the pub tomorrow, where you can't get any phone reception, so I don't expect a great deal happening," said Steve Coppell ahead of the window's final day.
That is the alternative view; that there is still much demand for these players, but that supply inevitably diminishes in January, because the Championship is invariably so squeezed that every side still has something to play for. By the start of next season, the location of the likes of Ledley, Hunt and Delph will give us a much greater indication of market trends.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/feb/06/football-league-transfer-window-inactivity