- Why do clubs make such appalling errors with some transfers?
- Arsenal yet again top of the injury table. Why is this?
By Tony Attwood
Arsenal appear to have had the biggest net spend this summer, with a total of £267m spent on players and just £10m received for the players who have left, giving a rather obvious net spend total of £257m. Clearly, this has been influenced not just by the horrific injury record of last season, but the way in which the injuries have been continuing this season as well.
The final bits of news before the window slammed shuit (it always slams shut you’ll have noticed, it never is gently pulled in and the latch put down ready for January – it is quite amazing it hasn’t broken) included defender Piero Hincapié from Bayer Leverkusen on loan for the rest of the season with an option to buy.
There is obviously a strong positive vibe about Hincapiéabout however as he has been given the number 5 shirt. The only trouble is that having arrived, he has immediately gone again on what is laughingly called international “duty”.
Moving the other way, Fábio Vieira has joined Hamburg on loan for the rest of the season. He seems to have lost his position in the squad as the way the tactics have evolved as the manager looks for ways first to get back to the approach of the two seasons before last, and then go a step further.
Albert Sambi Lokonga has left after four years and gone to Volksparkstadion. Elsewhere, Oleksandr Zinchenko has gone to Nottingham Forest and Reiss Nelson has gone to Brentford, both on loan.
While there is no restriction on the number of players who can be loaned to and from clubs outside of England, Arsenal are only permitted two players on loan from other English clubs, and only a total of four such loans in the course of one season. Also there cannot be more than one player loan from the same English club.
So overall, Arsenal spent £267m and received £10m, which my calculator suggests means a net outflow of money of over a quarter of a billion pounds, which in turn means all ticket prices, programme prices, beer prices, video prices and the prices of anything else they can think of selling go up month by month.
Arsenal of course, did not spend nearly as much as Liverpool (they spent £446.5m), but they also brought in £228.1m in sales, so their net spend comes in at £218m, £39m below Arsenal’s spend.
Manchester United are of course, in desperate trouble on the pitch, but their finances are also screwed because of the activities of previous owners who have happily walked off with a lot of cash, so although they came third in the net spending totals, it was on £170m. Put another way, Arsenal spent 57% more than ManU
Fourth in the chart is Tottenham, who spent £171.2m, received £17m and so had a net spend of £154.2m Their problem of course, is that they conceded almost double the number of goals that Arsenal let in last season, and that is a disaster area that has to be fixed before they can think of seriously climbing up the league.
But what has made this transfer window unusual is that Sunderland have decided not to follow the approach of other recently promoted clubs in buying a few players just to make things look reasonable, but really expecting to go straight back down, while keeping most of their solidarity payments. In fact, Sunderland have spent more than Tottenham this summer but have sold more too, giving them a net spend of £141m. If they don’t survive this season in the Premier League, that could be quite a financial burden for them to deal with in the Championship.
After them comes Everton with a net spend of £114m, which I think they really needed to do to show supporters that they want a team that is going to be worthy of their new seaside (well, river side) stadium. But they are not alone among the promoted clubs in spending to stay up. Leeds have a net spend of £103m.
But perhaps the biggest surprise is that Manchester City only had a net spend of £89.9m. Now that is obviously not because they were so far ahead of everyone last season: they were third, 14 points behind Liverpool.
To understand anything about ManC these days, we have to consider that the 115 or so charges against them from the rest of the League are STILL outstanding and unresolved. Are they trying to show that they are now being a more law-abiding club? Quite possibly – but will the rest of the league buy it? I really hope not.
Seven clubs received more than they spent: Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Chelsea, Wolverhampton, Brentford, Brighton and Bournemouth. Villa needed a profit to avoid FFP problems, and Chelsea have simply turned themselves into a Player Dealership, where as a spare time occupation, the players they trade also play football sometimes. But they too needed this to avoid further FFP enquiries.
The biggest profit makers were Bourneouth, who now find themselves £65m better off I wonder what they will spend it on… their long awaited new ground perhaps?.
