Why has the transfer market not quite taken off this summer?

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By Tony Attwood

“Strong signings and smart strategy: Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham project steps up a gear.”  That’s the headline in the “behind closed doors” Telegraph (you need to pay to read it).

But Yahoo Sports takes a different view saying, “Ange Postecoglou’s big Tottenham transfer problem as he has some major decisions to make”.

In fact the European regulations of homegrown and foreign players is now different from those for the Premier League and it looks like leaving one or two clubs in a bit of a quandary when it comes to their European squads, depending at it now does on whether under 21 year old players are “club trained” or “association trained” as well as what their nationality is.

And of course this comes at a time when some clubs are trying to meet the FFP regulations as well.

Worse, the regulations next season and the season after change again wherein the amount that can be spent on staff and player costs gradually goes down to 70 per cent of turnover.

Of course most media commentaries on who Arsenal should buy ignore all this, because it is fiddly and difficult to take in, while “Arsenal to buy £100m player” is nice and easy to set as a headline.  But these regs are having an impact and this is a much slower transfer window than we have seen in the past.

What this all means is that clubs with any sense (and that does not seem to be all of them) are buying players with a view to what the regulations will look like in two years time, and are expanding their youth set-up to allow them to wade through ever more players to find the one or two gems who really will make it to the top level – and can be sold. 

Yes we are in the era of signing up children to sell them later as there are already just hints that some clubs are simply dealing in young players not because they will want to play them, but because other clubs will need young home grown players as the rules get tighter every year.

So what clubs are ending up with is a core of players who are at the heart of the manager’s requirements this year and next year, and a range of other young players who might not get many games but whose value increases because of their age and nationality.

Now the big factor above and beyond all this is where the club stands at this moment.  After all it is ok to think about transfers of big name players, but that is not much good if suddenly the club does a Chelsea and finds it has more players than it can use.  

Last season Chelsea had a staggeringly large squad of 56 players of whom 32 were used in the Premier League.  A lot of the players were at the young end of the spectrum and as a result, the average age of Chelsea players in the league last season was lower than any other club (23.7 years, according to Transfermarkt)

So let’s compare the figures of a few key clubs using the Transfermarkt data.  When it comes to squad size Arsenal were 14th in the league.  Chelsea had the most with 56 and Everton the least with 34 players.

In terms of players actually used Manchester City had the lowest number with 24 while Arsenal were just one above on 25.  At the other end of the table we have Nottingham Forest on 33, Chelsea and Newcastle on 32 each and Aston Villa on 31.

Finally in terms of average age Chelsea had the youngest squad at 23.7 years, Tottenham were just above them with an average age of 25 years, and Arsenal just above that on 25.1 years.

Clearly using a low number of players through the season suggests stability and success, given that two of the three clubs at the foot of that table were Arsenal and Manchester City on 25 players.  At the other extreme, the clubs using the most players (Chelsea, Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest and Newcastle) all had problems at least for part of the season.

In short more player is normally not a good idea although the average age of the players used, while not closely related to success now, can mean having young players who can be sold on at a profit in future years.  That of course is not an issue for Manchester City for whom anything that doesn’t fit their approach can be contested in the courts, but for clubs that accept the rules as they are, age can be an issue.

Here’s an extract from the Transfermarkt table that we’ve used.  The number of players used can be over 25 because of the rules allowing under 21s to be in the squad but not counted in the 25.

Club	Squad	Players used	Average age
Fulham FC	35	25	28.3
Aston Villa	46	31	26.4
Manchester City	36	25	26.3
Manchester United	46	31	25.9
Liverpool FC	45	30	25.6
Arsenal FC	40	25	25.1
Tottenham Hotspur	41	29	25.0
Chelsea FC	56	32	23.7