Premiership Summer Spending...Transfers/Values

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Macmoish
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Premiership Summer Spending...Transfers/Values Jul 10, 2011 6:17:55 GMT

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Post by Macmoish on Jul 10, 2011 6:17:55 GMT

INDEPENDENT

Megabucks clubs spending in fear as Platini's dictat starts to bite

Uefa guidelines have already had a big effect on the acquisition of players this summer

By Steve Tongue

Sunday, 10 July 2011

Rarely, if ever, can so many have been talking about fair play at the same time. This decency, however, has nothing to do with simulation, shirt-pulling or shouting at referees. Minds are being concentrated at last by Financial Fair Play, a concept introduced by Uefa earlier than some realised.

Soon after the end of last season, Manchester City's manager Roberto Mancini hinted that his club could be in line for one last splurge in the transfer market before FFP kicked in. Too late; the first accounting period for club finances began on 1 June, by which time City had not got round to buying anyone.

When they did, it was significant that Gaël Clichy and Stefan Savic, both signed in the past week, cost well under £10m. Last summer, Mancini bought five players for some £20m or more each, which is why financial figures for 2010-11 to be published in September will look even more horrible than the £121m loss announced last autumn.

The sponsorship deal of between £300-400m with Etihad airline agreed on Friday will cut the deficit from then on, but the club acknowledge that there is still a way to go to comply with new Uefa guidelines.

City are the sort of club that FFP is designed to rein in. Uefa under Michel Platini have been concerned that a small group of clubs in the leading European countries has too much spending power, based on benefactors like Sheikh Mansour and Chelsea's Roman Abramovich. Those clubs have always been aware of the danger that a sugar daddy could turn sour and walk away (as Thaksin Shinawatra did at what we used to call Eastlands) but there has been no immediate incentive to put their finances in order, until now.

In the first three-year period, clubs will be allowed to lose up to ¤45m (£41m), reducing to nothing by the 2018-19 season. This figure is gauged, essentially, by weighing revenue against expenditure on wages and any loss on transfers. Money spent on youth development, stadium improvements or community work does not count.

Punishment could involve not being granted a Uefa licence and therefore being banned from the Champions' League or Europa League. As with any legislation the question that has to be asked is how clubs will try to circumvent it. The most obvious way would be for the owners to pay a vastly inflated sum for, say, their company to buy naming rights to the stadium or a shirt sponsorship, which is why the figures hinted at by City are already being questioned. Barcelona, Manchester United and Liverpool may have achieved £20-25m per year for the name on their shirts, but City are nowhere near that trio in terms of profile. Similarly, critics argue that naming Arsenal's new stadium after a middle eastern airline was worth only £3m a year (the rest of their £90m deal was for the shirts). Uefa insist the small print will be investigated.

Where does all this leave the Premier League clubs? In no position to pay exaggerated fees or wages, which could be seen as an advantage for the more hard-headed; City's Mancini, becoming aware of the new realities, said last week that his club will no longer "do what everyone thinks we will and pay £10m more than other clubs". It may even be a good time to cash in the disenchantedCarlos Tevez if there is a club somewhere that can square a £40m fee with their own accountants.

Chelsea, who will have studied the City sponsorship, had their last rush of blood to the head in paying £50m for Fernando Torres before the first FFP period kicked in, and will be telling Andre Villas-Boas that while there is money available, no such extravagance will be entertained. Liverpool were able to hand on the Torres money in paying equally inflated prices in January for Andy Carroll and Luiz Suarez and in signing Jordan Henderson and chasing Aston Villa's Stewart Downing they are following a policy of acquiring young British talent with sell-on value.

Manchester United are looking like the big spenders, though they are still in credit after receiving £80m for Cristiano Ronaldo. United also have vast income – their annual revenue has doubled in six years to £350m. At the end of last season, they received £60m from the Premier League alone in television fees and merit money, with Chelsea, Arsenal, City, Liverpool and Tottenham not far behind and clubs like Everton and Aston Villa taking almost £50m.

Liverpool, seeking a stadium partner for a proposed new ground, and United set a new British benchmark for shirt sponsorship. So the money is still there; the key is balancing it with transfer fees and wages.

Like United, Arsenal have done that, with income more than twice their wage bill. Arsenal have been parsimonious in relative terms and nobody will welcome FFP more than Arsène Wenger, probably the one manager whose own board would like him to spend more. For Wenger, who has raged about the "financial doping" of Chelsea and others, the new regulations are too late; his prudence may mean the loss of trophy-less players like Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri and could even cost a Champions' League place, either through losing next month's qualifying tie or dropping out of the top four.

Summer business: Who's spent what

Arsenal

In: Carl Jenkinson (Charlton Athletic, £1m). Total: £1m

Aston Villa

In: None. Total: £0m

Blackburn Rovers

In: Myles Anderson (Aberdeen, free) Total: £0m

Bolton Wanderers

In: Darren Pratley (Swansea City, free). Total: £0m

Chelsea

In: None. Total: £0m

Everton

In: Eric Dier (Sporting Lisbon, season-long loan). Total: £0m

Fulham

In: Dan Burn (Darlington, £350,000); Csaba Somogyi (Rakospalotai EAC), undisclosed. Total: £0.35m.

Liverpool

In: Jordan Henderson (Sunderland, £20m); Charlie Adam (Blackpool, £7m). Total: £27m.

Manchester City

In: Gaël Clichy (Arsenal, £7m); Stefan Savic (Partizan Belgrade, £6m). Total: £13m

Manchester United

In: Phil Jones (Blackburn Rovers, £16.5m); Ashley Young (Aston Villa, £16m); David de Gea (Atletico Madrid, £18m). Total: £50.5m

Newcastle United

In: Mehdi Abeid (Lens, undisclosed fee); Demba Ba (West Ham, free); Yohan Cabaye (Lille, £4.3m); Sylvain Marveaux (Rennes, free). Total: £4.3m

Norwich City

In: Elliott Bennett (Brighton & Hove Albion, £1.5m); Ritchie De Laet (Manchester United, season-long loan); Steve Morison (Millwall, £3m); James Vaughan (Everton, £2.5m); Bradley Johnson (Leeds, free); Anthony Pilkington (Huddersfield Town, £2m). Total: £9m

Queens Park Rangers

In: None. Total: £0m

Stoke City

In: None. Total: £0m

Sunderland

In: Ahmed Elmohamady (ENPPI, £2m); Ji Dong-won (Chunnam, £2.2m); Keiren Westwood (Coventry, free); Seb Larsson (Birmingham, free); Craig Gardner (Birmingham, £6m); Connor Wickham (Ipswich, £13m); Wes Brown (Manchester Utd, £1m); John O'Shea (Manchester Utd, £4m); David Vaughan (Blackpool, free.) Total: £28.2m

Swansea City

In: Danny Graham (Watford, £3.5m); Steven Caulker (Tottenham Hotspur, season-long loan); Jose Moreira (Benfica, undisclosed). Total spent: £3.5m

Tottenham Hotspur

In: Brad Friedel (Aston Villa, free). Total spent: £0m

West Bromwich Albion

In: Billy Jones (Preston North End, free); Gareth McAuley (Ipswich Town, free); Zoltan Gera (Fulham, free); Borja Valero (Villarreal, undisclosed fee). Total spent: £0m

Wigan Athletic

In: Ali Al-Habsi (Bolton, £4m). Total spent: £4m

Wolverhampton Wanderers

In: Jamie O'Hara (Tottenham Hotspur, £5m), Dorus De Vries (Swansea, free). Total spent: £5m

www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/transfers/megabucks-clubs-spending-in-fear-as-platinis-dictat-starts-to-bite-2309874.html

"These are the times that try men's souls"

Macmoish
Administrator

Posts: 60,295

Premiership Summer Spending...Transfers/Values Jul 10, 2011 6:18:18 GMT

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Post by Macmoish on Jul 10, 2011 6:18:18 GMT

INDEPENDENT

The Last Word: Loss of values at City comes from the top

Measuring everything in millions seems to be eating away the soul of a business called football

By Neil Robinson

There are five months to go, and the competition is fierce, but Garry Cook, the chief executive officer of Manchester City, may have uttered the most preposterous sentence of the year, in the world of sport or any other.

Commenting on the club's 10-year, £120 million deal with Etihad Airways, who have acquired naming rights for the City of Manchester Stadium, Cook explained his gratitude in language that occasionally came within nodding distance of plain English. "In addition to delivering significant revenue at a key stage in the club's evolution," he said, "the agreement creates exciting opportunities for our two organisations to co-operate more deeply commercially and on media and community initiatives in the future."

Deliver, create, co-operate: it seems this is what chief executive officers do by day and by night. However did the game get by for so long with mere club secretaries? The real clincher, though, is that dread phrase, "exciting opportunities", which brings to mind Kingsley Amis's splendid volleys at British Gas and other public utilities who bombard householders with "exciting offers" – two quid off your next bill!
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In City's case they round things to the nearest million. Sheikh Mansour (of the Collyhurst Mansours) has apparently thrown £1 billion at the City "project", in transfers and wages, since he bought the club three years ago, and he is not about to stop now. The last big signing, a Bosnian centre forward called Edin Dzeko, was acquired for £27m six months ago, but he is already in the stiffs, awaiting deportation to a friendlier home. Still, it's only money.

It's easy to mock, and mock we must, for laughter helps to bring the likes of Garry Two Rs, a former Nike salesman, to account. In the week that City mourned the loss of Mike Doyle, who gave 14 years of his life to the club, and played in a side that is still remembered for the brilliance of its football, we must also mock that big cry-baby, Carlos Tevez, who has let it be known (again) that he wants out of Manchester. There are only two decent restaurants there, he bleated, although as he also said he never left his house we are not obliged to take his word on culinary matters. He had spent two years in Manchester, at Old Trafford, before he switched camps, so it has taken this dim boy a very long time to work out what a dump the place is.

"Loyalty is what they stuff you with", goes the old saw, and there used to be some truth in it. For decades football was a feudal business, with the players cast as serfs. Now they are the masters, and think nothing of claiming "loyalty" bonuses merely for observing the terms of their contracts. If Tevez really wants to be with his daughters (his latest reason for upping sticks) he has only to return to Argentina. They have football clubs there, we are told, and all those other amenities that sad old Manchester is unable to provide. After five highly-paid years in England Carlos the moaner certainly doesn't need the brass. Perhaps he could use some of it to open a restaurant of his own. "Here's something I discovered in England – Manchester Tart". Nay, lad, the joke's on you.

City have bent over backwards to accommodate their mardy child, and he has repaid them with insult upon insult. He is not alone, of course. Not many footballers have a sense of the world beyond their narrow cloisters. They take their wealth for granted, and there are always hangers-on to tell them how good they are; ladies of easy virtue to provide the usual services. What a seedy world it is!

If Cook really wanted to make himself useful he could "deliver" a boot to a plump Argentinian backside, which would be an authentic community initiative, for it is plain that the majority of City supporters can live happily without the services of this spoiled brat, gifted though he is. Then he can get back to the arduous task of finding a sentence of pure wind to match this week's stupendous effort. The formbook suggests that if anybody can, he can.

Take last look at Indian masters

After three months of shadow play the cricketing summer flickers into life next week when the Indian tourists arrive for a four-Test series that promises to be memorable. For the first time lovers of the game in that cricket-daft land can say they have the best team in the world, over 50 overs or five days. That said, England will back themselves to emerge as winners when the final ball is bowled at The Oval next month. They've become quite a good side, too.

Everybody will be glad to see Sachin Tendulkar one last time. Everybody, that is, except England's bowlers, who have a chance to test themselves against the highest run-maker in Test history, who, mirabile dictu, seems to have got better in the past couple of years. For his part Tendulkar will be searching for his first Test century at Lord's. It takes some believing that neither he, nor Ricky Ponting, nor Brian Lara, the three supreme batsmen of the past 20 years, have reached three figures there.

Another great batsman is coming to England for one last hurrah. Rahul Dravid has spent his career playing Gielgud to Tendulkar's Olivier but nobody who holds cricket dear can deny that he has been a great cricketer. Look at the record: 32 centuries in 152 Tests, the latest against West Indies at Kingston last month; more runs (12,275) than anybody in Tests except Tendulkar and Ponting, at an average of 52.

Like Tendulkar, Dravid has never made a century at Lord's. He came within five runs, on his debut in 1995, so he too will hope to leave one last mark on a game he has served so nobly. If you have cricket in your blood, wish this outstanding man well. Dravid, who has never drawn attention to himself, is one of the greatest of all cricketers, and he deserves to go out with a bang.

www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/the-last-word-loss-of-values-at-city-comes-from-the-top-2309898.html

"These are the times that try men's souls"

Macmoish
Administrator

Posts: 60,295

Premiership Summer Spending...Transfers/Values Jul 10, 2011 6:18:31 GMT

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Post by Macmoish on Jul 10, 2011 6:18:31 GMT

Guardian/Paul Wilson

New Uefa guidelines persuade Premier League clubs to shop locally

The prices paid for Phil Jones and Jordan Henderson suggest that value is no longer a prime consideration for the big clubs

"I'd like to see some bullish signings," Ian Wright has declared, in the course of an enjoyably peevish newspaper rant lamenting Arsenal's new status as a feeder club for Manchester City.

Who wouldn't? Wright was speaking as a Gunners fan, naturally, though amid fears that Cesc Fábregas and Samir Nasri could follow Gaël Clichy out of the club, at least Arsenal are bringing in Gervinho and talking about Juan Mata. Wright should consider how it must feel to be a Blackburn or an Everton fan, with no signings at all on the horizon, a Sunderland supporter struggling to get excited about another tranche of Manchester United reserves, or even a Liverpool follower failing to understand where all the midfielders are going to fit in.

This summer's transfer activity is already shaping up to be busier and more expensive than in the last close season, when Sir Alex Ferguson pointedly restricted his spending after deciding there was no value in the market, though the only conclusion to be drawn from the prices handed over for promising but largely untested talents in Phil Jones and Jordan Henderson is that value is no longer a prime consideration. Nationality and age are now important factors too, and while Uefa's rule tweaks appear well-intentioned and should have the ultimately desirable effect of reducing the Premier League's dependency on overseas talent, the immediate result has been clubs paying over the odds to secure what limited home-produced potential can be identified.

Expensive the new crop of signings may be – Ferguson has already spent in the region of £50m and may still make a renewed bid for Nasri – bullish they are not. Bullish would be United turning their financial guns on Jack Wilshere, not revealing interest in a player stalling on a new contract in the knowledge he will be a free agent in 12 months. If Nasri goes north, he will only be following a trail blazed – unhappily – by Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Touré. Arsène Wenger has done business with rivals before and generally got the better of it, even if it is difficult to see how he can keep up Champions League appearances at the Emirates if he lets both Fábregas and Nasri go at the same time.

Liverpool are widely supposed to be spending big with a view to regaining their Champions League status this season, yet even if they capture Stewart Downing from Aston Villa the objection has already been raised that upwards of £40m will have been spent on three players who were not interesting any current top four clubs. It remains to be seen how many games Henderson and Charlie Adam will play together, though it is a sobering thought that they notionally occupy the roles vacated by Javier Mascherano and Xabi Alonso. Not only is it hard to sell that as progress to the increasingly bewildered Anfield faithful, it is impossible to regard it as bullish. Having brought in Andy Carroll the plan is clearly to provide accurate crossers in Downing and Adam who can put the ball on his head, though Luis Suárez needs the ball on the ground and one wonders what the skilful and shrewd Uruguayan thinks of Liverpool going back to the 50s when Barcelona are wowing the world with such a sophisticated short-passing game they no longer even bother to put in crosses from corners.

It would appear, with even Wenger talking of signing taller players and the need to gain strength in certain areas of the team, that English football is going to stick to its guns and stay with the physical approach for the next few seasons, instead of trying to emulate Barcelona and switch to keep-ball. With the obvious exception of Fábregas, just about the only unsettled Premier League player who could easily fit into Barcelona's playing style is Luka Modric, and the Spanish champions don't need him. Chelsea apparently do, though not as much as Tottenham if they are to have any hope of a Champions League return.

The most interesting aspect of a transfer tussle that can be confidently expected to last until the last few days of the window is that Chelsea seemed to think they could prise the best player from Spurs – notoriously hard bargainers – with an initial bid of £22m. The same Chelsea that blew £50m on an underperforming Fernando Torres in January, thereby giving selling clubs for the foreseeable future a licence to laugh in the face of opening offers of less than half that amount.

Chelsea's attempt to be bullish in the January window backfired, and though André Villas-Boas may be just the young, thrusting manager needed at Stamford Bridge, the eye-watering £13m paid to Porto in compensation stands out as the only startlingly bold investment by any English club this summer.

The Premier League's buccaneering days of raiding Europe and beyond for the most exciting talent are perhaps over. English clubs are for the most part buying players from each other, making safe, unremarkable purchases at prices that are anything but. This feels like a period of adjustment.

After being represented in six of the past seven Champions League finals, leading English clubs are no longer confident that Europe can be conquered. Manchester City may have all the money, but they are not going to beat Barcelona, and neither are Manchester United with Ashley Young. The standard is being set in Spain, England is no longer quite where it is at, and the challenge for the Premier League now is to take time out, regroup and come again rather than relapse into dangerous insularity.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/jul/09/uefa-guidelines-premier-league-transfers

"These are the times that try men's souls"

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kenthoop: oh no not Fox Nov 23, 2024 16:36:49 GMT

texasranger: good work by Saito another corner! Nov 23, 2024 16:37:24 GMT

texasranger: off the line then a good saveand another corner Nov 23, 2024 16:38:26 GMT

texasranger: 10 minutes Nov 23, 2024 16:39:52 GMT

kenthoop: Come on Urrrrrrrs Nov 23, 2024 16:44:04 GMT

kenthoop: 6 min plus extra Nov 23, 2024 16:44:49 GMT

texasranger: lucky let off there Nov 23, 2024 16:45:17 GMT

texasranger: last few minutes to try and win this Nov 23, 2024 16:48:41 GMT

texasranger: Lloyd hits the post , unlucky Nov 23, 2024 16:49:23 GMT

kenthoop: at least Lloyd got closer than Celar ever has Nov 23, 2024 16:51:07 GMT

texasranger: injury time Nov 23, 2024 16:52:03 GMT

texasranger: dangerous freekick coming for them Nov 23, 2024 16:53:35 GMT

texasranger: should be starting Lloyd Nov 23, 2024 16:55:08 GMT

texasranger: thats it 1-1, still no home win and no scorer for usas it was an OG Nov 23, 2024 16:55:58 GMT

kenthoop: I agree if he can't score from the penalty spot then he should be dropped and somebody else given a chance Nov 23, 2024 16:56:37 GMT

kenthoop: well at least we never lost ,,Cardiff next Nov 23, 2024 16:57:33 GMT

kenthoop: bye Tex thanks for the company catch you next time Nov 23, 2024 16:58:20 GMT

texasranger: 23 shots only 5 on target... athough 2 hit the post Nov 23, 2024 16:58:45 GMT

texasranger: bye kent hope you get through the storm OK Nov 23, 2024 16:59:16 GMT

kenthoop: hope so fed up with all these storms Nov 23, 2024 17:00:05 GMT