Which clubs are spending now, and what they spent last season.

 

 

• • So now we know how the Arsenal story will run from here on in. Time to hold our nerve.
  • How the media are repeating last year’s transfer rumours as this year’s news

 

By Tony Attwood

So desperate is the media to find ways to knock Arsenal that the Daily Mail are now reduced to finding typos and slips in social media posts put out by Paul Merson.  Such action gives us a sense of where this season is going to go.

But while the media go to trivia, I thought I might try something else: a comparison of clubs’ spending of late, alongside a note of their final position last season…

Expenditure 2024/25, (thus not including this transfer window)

1. Chelsea £356.3m.  League position 2024/25: 4th
2. Manchester City  £313.9m.  League position 2024/25: 3rd.
3. Manchester United £273.2m.  League position 2024/25: 15th
4. Liverpool £222m.  League position 2024/25: 1st
5. Tottenham Hotspur £198.8m.  League position 2024/25: 17th.
6. Arsenal £162.4m.  League position 2024/25: 2nd
7. Newcastle United: £38m.   League position 2024/25: 5th.

So the first point is that the amount of money spent in any particular transfer window often has nothing much to do with where a club ends up at the end of the season.  It is something we have found before, and it keeps coming up each time: buying players is no guarantee of ending up in a higher position in the league.

Then I thought I would have a look at how much money these same clubs have spent in the current transfer window – although of course, this is simply a snapshot – there are undoubtedly still many more transfers to come.  These figures come from the Guardian and show the position of each club among the seven big clubs in terms of spending this summer.   After that is the position the club was in, in terms of spending last summer.

1. Liverpool £202m: Spend position last season: 4
2. Chelsea £187m: Spend position last season: 1
3. Manchester City  £107m: Spend position last season: 2
4. Tottenham Hotspur £68m: Spend position last season: 5
5. Manchester United £66m: Spend position last season: 3
6. Arsenal £61m: Spend position last season: 6
7. Newcastle United zero: Spend position last season: 7

In relation to this Newcastle figure, the club seems to be in a special position in relation to financial fair play regulations.  I am not quite sure how deep this goes and whether they will be able to buy more players, but there seems to be restrictions in place despite selling Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest and Yankuba Minteh to Brighton and Hove.   It also looks like those executives in the club who allowed this financial mess to happen at Newcastle have now been moved on – but of course, the mess they created is still there.  The lesson is simple: beware of directors seeking to curry favour by spending big.    

Arsenal on the other hand, have done well by having some brilliant youngsters coming through the ranks and then being sold on – sales which count as pure profit in Financial Fair Play terms.  The value of the youth system at Arsenal is thus not just having young players coming into the first team – it is their value in balancing the FFP charts.  

But the Newcastle problem is particularly intriguing as it comes in an interview to be found in The Athletic, where one of the executives of the club is quoted as saying at the end of last season, “No one fully understands, apart from Eddie and his staff, just how difficult this season has been. Things could have gone very differently.” 

Now of course such issues relating to finances are never mentioned when journalsts do their statements about who is buying whom, and that can lead to annoyance from fans, as it is thought that the club have let a great transfer slip through their hands – when in fact FFP has meant that the transfer was never on in the first place.

And this leads to a central point about transfers.   Once a player is brought in, the cost of that player is part of the financial calculations, irrespective of how good or bad he is, how often he plays, how many times he gets injured and misses a match, or anything else.   

In other words, it is possible to buy a player for £60m, have him kicked to pieces by an opposition thug playing in front of a compliant referee, and then the player is out for months.  In fact the only thing that stops this sort of behaviour is that the amount that it helps the fouling team is one match.  They are aware, however, that it also helps other teams who are yet to play the team of the kicked player.  Who the opposition is playing next is part of the calculations about how the opposition’s players are treated.

Thus, tactics are also emerging in how to intimidate a player or otherwise nullify his impact on the match, without leaving him injured for subsequent games.   It is not a sporting approach to football, but it is what football has become.  In short, clubs are looking at who their rivals are playing in the next few games when deciding how heavy their own defenders should go into tackles.

Risking a yellow card can be worthwhile if it means the opposition player is going to be out for a while, which will take that club down the league.   In the game, its called strategy, but just as the ways of referees are never mentioned in the media, these strategies remain part of the secret world of football.