- Arsenal losing 16 players this summer to the world cup. How many will make it back?
- Artifiicial intelligence to be used to filter worldcup messages, but stadia may not be full
By Tony Attwood
One of the things about journalistic reporting in the summer is that transfer rumours take up a huge amount of space, actual transfers take up less space (obviously, since 97% of the rumours never actually turn into transfers), and then there is very little consideration in the media of how well the newly transferred players have made out once the season has started.
The benefits for this are totally in favour of the media. They don’t want us remembering that 97% of their rumours come to nought, and neither they nor the clubs involved want to talk too much about players who have cost a lot of money who then turn out not to work very well with the team to whom they have been transferred.
But Transfermarkt have published a list of the value of each club’s players by current estimates for the club’s Premier League players. The final column in the table below shows the increase or decrease in the players’ values, which takes into account, of course, where the club ended up in the last season. In this regard, we might well understand some clubs’ player values have declined because of age, some because their club has been relegated etc., while Arsenal’s player values will have risen upon them winning the league by a massive seven points at the end of last season.
Obviously, these are Transfermarkt’s figures, and I can’t question or check them, although the site is normally very accurate, but they do show how player values can fluctuate quite a lot just over the period of the end of the season, when clubs start to look and see who they can offload and offers are starting to be made for others.
In this regard, much depends on how the selling club is viewed; is it desperate to get some of these players off its books so that it can spend money again? Or is it trying to hang on to its squad?
One unknown of course, is the situation of Manchester City, where, as ever, we have no idea if the Premier League is really going to tackle the club over its spending and financing, or whether we are going to have another summer of no comment and enter the new season once more with no action taken against them.
In relation to Arsenal, what we can see is that the value of the club’s players increased by over one per cent as a result of winning the league. However, this is as nothing when compared with the rise of the value of Brighton and Hove’s squad.
Rather amusingly, asking Google this morning for details of Brighton’s best ever finish I was told that, “The club’s 2021–22 season saw a ninth-place finish in the Premier League, the highest Brighton had ever finished in English top-flight football, with a record tally of 51 points.” Obviously, this ought to be updated, as Brighton came in eighth and will play in the Conference League next season, hence the rise in value, I guess. Figures below are from TransferMarkt – and they do show just how quickly the value of a squad can go up or down. If Tottenham’s player value continues to move in this way at this rate, the squad will be worth nothing by next March. It won’t happen, of course, but it is an amusing thought.
| Club | Value 15 May | Value 8 June | increase or decrease | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total value of all clubs: | €12.58bn | €12.48bn | -0.8 % | |
| 1 | Manchester City | €1.31bn | €1.32bn | 0.6 % |
| 2 | Arsenal FC | €1.23bn | €1.25bn | 1.3 % |
| 3 | Chelsea FC | €1.16bn | €1.11bn | -4.3 % |
| 4 | Liverpool FC | €1.02bn | €939.50m | -8.3 % |
| 5 | Manchester United | €747.15m | €752.10m | 0.7 % |
| 6 | Tottenham Hotspur | €802.50m | €700.00m | -12.8 % |
| 7 | Newcastle United | €708.25m | €696.35m | -1.7 % |
| 8 | Nottingham Forest | €568.00m | €577.60m | 1.7 % |
| 9 | Brighton & Hove Alb | €494.00m | €567.00m | 14.8 % |
| 10 | AFC Bournemouth | €507.10m | €565.70m | 11.6 % |
Of course, the value of players is obviously dependent on the position a club finished in the league as well as what is anticipated for the following season, but some of the movements in value in the passing of just 24 days are quite extraordinary, and it does suggest clubs are, or at least should be, very careful about when they offer players up for sale.
After all, the value of Tottenham Hotspur’s prime saleable asset – its players – fell by 12% in under a month. After Brighton, the largest gain was for Bournemouth – although of course the actual value of a player is only ascertained at the moment of sale, just as many of us find out when trying to buy or sell a house. (Which reminds me, why is it that whenever I have tried to sell a house I am living in, the price for that sort of house is depressed as there is “no demand,” whereas each house I have tried to buy a house over the years, the price has been high as such houses are “really hard to find” and “everyone is looking for them”. Odd that.
