By Andrew Crawshaw
I saw an article this morning referencing the latest CIES Observatory weekly report which according to the headline was listing the most fouled teams in Europe. On checking the source document it was, of course, not actually doing that at all but the difference between the numbers of fouls committed by a team and the number they have committed against their players. I didn’t think the report warranted any more of my time.
I did see a link to the latest player transfer values and thought it might be interesting to see which of our players have increased or decreased in value during the course of the season. The list does contain some dramatic changes both up and down. The CIES data is based on their own idea of what contributes to a player’s value and includes, but is not limited to, the age of the player, length remaining on their current contract, their international status, which clubs are likely to be interested in buying them and for how much.
The net effect on the club is that the squad value has increased by approximately €80m since the start of the season. The players who have increased the most in value are Matteo Guendouzi up from €7.4m to a staggering €69.8m, Lucas Torreira’s value has also seen a dramatic increase in value from from €33.7 to €78.1m making him our third highest valued player behind Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang ( €89.2m) and Alexandre Lacazette (€78.2m). Both of our striker’s values have dropped, probably due to the reduced time remaining on their contracts. Alex Iwobi’s value has also increased by €38.7m to €68.7m making him our fifth highest value player. Bernd Leno has also seen his value show a healthy increase from €15.2m to €39.6m).
The players with the biggest reductions in their values are Mesut Ozil, down €38.2m to a lowly €16.4m, Laurent Koscielney, Shkodran Mustafi and Aaron Ramsey each down by €17-19m. Mesut’s value should go back up somewhat with regular gametime although his resale value will clearly be affected by his very high salary.
You will see a few players with zero value, these are those who are listed as part of the first team squad due to their age but haven’t actually made any appearances at senior level.
| Contract Expiry | CIES Value Now €m | CIES Value May 2018 (approx) | Change | |
| Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang | 30/06/2021 | 89.2 | 95.6 | -6.4 |
| Andre Lacazette | 30/06/2022 | 78.2 | 87 | -8.8 |
| Lucas Torreira | 30/06/2023 | 78.1 | 33.7 | 44.4 |
| Matteo Guendouzi | 30/06/2022 | 69.8 | 7.4 | 62.4 |
| Alex Iwobi | 30/06/2020 | 68.7 | 34.3 | 34.4 |
| Granit Xhaka | 30/06/2023 | 63.1 | 67.0 | -3.9 |
| Hector Bellerin | 30/06/2023 | 42.1 | 49.6 | -7.5 |
| Shkodran Mustafi | 30/06/2021 | 40.5 | 59.4 | -18.9 |
| Bernd Leno | 30/06/2023 | 39.6 | 15.2 | 24.4 |
| Sokratis Papastathopoulos | 30 Jun 2021 | 27.2 | 9.8 | 17.4 |
| Henrikh Mkhitarian | 30/06/2021 | 22.0 | 23 | -1 |
| Saad Kolasinac | 30/06/2022 | 20.1 | 14.9 | 5.2 |
| Rob Holding | 30/06/2020 | 19.4 | 16.3 | 3.1 |
| Mesut Özil | 30/06/2021 | 16.4 | 54.6 | -38.2 |
| Edward Nketiah | 30/06/2022 | 12.5 | 7.8 | 4.7 |
| Ainsley Maitland-Niles | 30/06/2023 | 12.5 | 8.0 | 4.5 |
| Joe Willock | 30/06/2022 | 9.7 | 0 | 9.7 |
| Konstantinos Mavopranos | 30/06/2023 | 9.4 | 7.2 | 2.2 |
| Mohamed Elneny | 30/06/2022 | 8.8 | 11.5 | -2.7 |
| Aaron Ramsey | 30/06/2019 | 6.1 | 20.6 | -14.5 |
| Laurent Koscielny | 30/06/2020 | 5.8 | 23.5 | -17.7 |
| Danny Welbeck | 30/06/2019 | 4 | 13.7 | -9.7 |
| Emile Smith-Rowe | 30/06/2023 | 3.2 | 0 | 3.2 |
| Nacho Monreal | 30/06/2019 | 2.7 | 14.4 | -11.7 |
| Carl Jenkinson | 30/06/2020 | 2.4 | 1.5 | 0.9 |
| Stephan Lichtsteiner | 30/06/2020 | 1.3 | 0 | 1.3 |
| Petr Cech | 30/06/2019 | 1.3 | 4.6 | -3.3 |
| Cohen Bramall | 30/06/2018 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Deyan Iliev | 30/06/2018 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Emiliano Martinez | 30/06/2021 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total value | 754.1 | 680.6 |
The good news for the club is that the gains have been greater than the losses and that three of our summer signings have shown the biggest increases. Whoever takes over as Head of Recruitment will have a big job to improve on those purchases
Another recent (but slightly older) CIES Report on Overall Squad valued has PL top six club values as :-
Man City – €1,458m
Liverpool – €1,387m
Spurs – €1, 044m
Man United – €1,001m
Arsenal – €743m
Chelsea – €738m
The only non PL clubs in the top 10 are Barcelona €1220m, Juventus €924m, PSG €888m, Atletico Madrid €882m and Real Madrid €806m. Chelsea are in 11th place.
As usual the squad values are a reliable indicator of League table positions. Should we finish above Spurs it will represent something of a surprise but be very welcome. It will need a miracle with self developed players for us to be able to increase our squad value to something approaching that of City, Liverpool, Spurs or United.
Chelsea and Ourselves are in fifth and sixth place in the value stakes, to finish higher than that should be regarded as an overachievement.
Interestingly Napoli our Europa League opponents have the twelfth highest valued squad in the Big 5 European Leagues, just two lower than Arsenal. Their value is €635m and is another indicator that it will be an extremely tough tie to win. None of Benfica, Eintracht, Valencia, Villareal, or Slavia Prague have squad values above €200m so an extremely unlucky draw (unless you really are a conspiracy theorist believing in hot and cold balls in the mix).
COYG
These values are pie in the sky.In the real world as of now Arsenal would be lucky to get £15m for Mustafi.
IWOBI 1M while Sokratis 100M
If I were Arsenal coach I won’t give him, even a single game
Of course the numbers are ‘pie in the sky’. They are theoretical values calculated monthly by CIES using their own closely guarded methodology. They are however consistent across the top 5 leagues in Europe (England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy) and so can be used for comparative purposes
We all have our own thoughts about individual players and will often disagree with each other. I sit next to someone who has always disliked Iwobi, whom I have watched from the U18s upwards and have always liked for example.
Mustafi for the most part is a decent defender, unfortunately he seems to have found the kstupid moment’ pills that Giroud left behind when he moved to Chelsea.
I must also apologise that some of the contract expiry dates are obviously wrong. We can’t have players still with the club with contracts that expired last June. I’ll check later and update my spreadsheet for future use.
OT
https://mobile.twitter.com/Sport_Witness/status/1107723587006402562
Wenger @32, below Someone &klopp? The disrespect. I’m a WOB, but even I won’t have him so low and below those guys in a list of all time greatest coaches. I won’t even have Zidane above him, not yet. In his short career he definitely achieved more than Wenger, but the career has been too short to make a generalization on. However, I’d put van gaal above Wenger in that list
Wenger’s record is unrivalled on many counts:- success in trophies, longevity, loyalty, integrity, sustainable business model, youth development and legacy
TomP
I have no idea if Wenger is in the right place in that list, I just don’t know enough about so many of them, or under what circumstances they operated, to even begin to assemble a list, but like yourself I find it difficult to see how he’s bellow Klopp or Simone, but as you’ll see in my comments bellow they’re not the only ones I disagree with, after just a cursory look.
The bottom line is I think it’s absolutely impossible to make this kind of list fairly because there is no way it can take into account all kinds of things, things such as:
:The managers from back in the day didn’t have to compete with clubs financially doped to the tune of Billions. I believe there was some private investment at some clubs, such as ‘Littlewoods’ at Liverpool, and yes there were clubs wealthier than others, but nothing like the last 10/15 years, because every club basically had to be self sustaining.
:The geographical location of a club, ie it’s easy to attract top players to London than the Midlands and North east for example, especially foreign players.
For example I think Brian Cloughs achievements at Derby County and Nottingham Forest, 2 unfashionable cubs in unfashionable locations (sorry the midlands, no offence meant) are possibly better than Jose Mourinho’s because apart from his achievement at Porto everything else he did was at big clubs with enormous transfer budgets. And even his Porto triumph possibly shouldn’t have stood seeing as Porto were found guilty of match fixing in that very season.
Media comment at the time:
“Last month, Porto were found guilty by the Portuguese league of fixing two league matches in 2003/04, the same season they won the Champions League – the world’s richest club competition.
As a result the club was docked six points, the club’s president Jorge Pinto da Costa was suspended for two years and Boavista were relegated to the second division for their part in match-fixing.”
Surely that puts anything they achieved in doubt?
:Under what financial restraints the manager was working
How many of the managers in that list worked with a zero transfer budget for 10 years?
:Is it dependent on you winning trophies because that is surely not the only guide to being a ‘great manager’? Take for example Alan Curbisley at Charlton Athletic.
When Lennie Lawrence left in July 1991, Curbishley became joint manager of the club with Steve Gritt, taking sole command from June 1995 and masterminding the revival of the club’s fortunes with two promotions and consolidation into the Premier League. Between seasons 2000/01 and 2005/06 he achieved premier league finishes of:
00/01: 9th
01/02: 14th
02/03: 12th
03/04: 7th
04/05 11th
05/06: 13th
I’ve always thought that was one of the most remarkable managerial achievements of the modern era, and possibly worthy of being ahead of some of the managers in that list.
They currently languish back in league 1.
So as much as lists like that can be a bit of fun, and as we’ve shown they do illicit reaction/comment, I honestly believe there is very little credibility to them.
Thanks for the link anyway.
@nitram, the magazine actually did give their criteria which to be fair seems to consider the points you made. And yes it’s always going to be impossible to make such a list fairly, but they could try, everyone can try. I don’t know some coaches in the list but I’m certainly reading up on them. If it were me, I would make a few changes, I would switch Rinus michels and SAF. SAF would be 1, michels would be 2 or 3. Bob Paisely would probably enter the top 5, definitely top 10. Guardiola wouldn’t be so high up, he’d be top 15 maybe, he’s a wonderful coach and I believe the way his barca team played certainly shaped the style of many successful teams including the Spanish national team that won the world cup and euros. Simeone is a great coach, my choice to replace Wenger, and certainly when I consider Wenger’s last few years, Simeone’s achievements are light years ahead, but when their entire careers are considered, Wenger definitely better. Wenger would enter the top 15definitely. Lvg too, taking a youthful ajax team, making them stars playing sexy football, then going in to win titles in the biggest clubs barca, Munich, man utd. 3rd place at the world cup too. He certainly should be up there
https://www.goal.com/en-ng/news/how-england-created-the-oxford-and-cambridge-of-youth/1pfm4ees2yr2p1prlgd8l8g4fm
Tony what do you have to say about this article? Seeing as you’re a major believer in the theory that England is doing poorly in international football due to lack of qualified coaches
I would need to study the premises on which the article is built to give you a proper answer TomP and I can’t do that now as I am on holiday in Australia. But I would say that in general my concern is that whatever is being achieved in the England international format is being achieved via the continual approach of giving nothing to youth football in general. Everything is being done to create elite players, whereas my view (and it is just that) is that the approach of other countries which uses the mass coaching system, generates not only top international teams, but also a much greater participation in football at ALL levels. This we dont have the FA diverted money that was meant to be used to be better pitches into their own coffers, which is why Sport England broke its links with them. That policy of not supporting youth football for all is awful in my opinion.
So yes maybe the FA has found a way around the mass coaching approach and the media will laud them for it, but at what a cost.
I have been impressed with all of UE ‘s buys , and am looking forward to their improved contributions next season . Of the lot , I am looking forward to see Sokratis’ impose truly himselF in the EPL.
Especially as our defence may look slightly different next season. Am hoping that our youngsters maintain their development and improvement , and remain as main stays in the team.
Up the Gunners !