Our unhealthy and unnatural obsession with the economic value of everything in society does not exclude our obsession with football. I remember when Newcastle broke the transfer record to buy the £15m Alan Shearer in 1996. It was, at the time, especially for a nine year old, an unfathomable amount of money. However in hindsight it, sadly, seems rather meagre in footballing terms.
It even seems to be an exceptional bargain when you consider the cretins that have been sold for more in recent times. And that is something important to remember.
The monetary value placed on players rarely depicts their actual value. There are few players who are bought for large transfer fees that truly warrant the sum spent on them; there are also many players who exceed the value put on their heads. Such is the transfer market, and such is the value of a good scouting network. You don’t need to look any further than the Premier League to see examples of this misguided market where the price elasticity of a product depends wholly on the purchaser rather than the product itself as it would in other markets. Some clubs will pay over the odds; some clubs will rarely if ever break the bank. Some clubs have shrewd negotiators; some clubs have wealthy negotiators less concerned with the cost than with the idea of the player.
There are a number of players and teams out performing their more expensive counterparts this year. Take the Chelsea game against Tottenham at Christmas. The entire Tottenham team, including the subs, cost less than Fernando Torres and David Luiz combined. You might say, and rightly so, that the same could be said for most teams in the league. But most teams aren’t third at the moment; Tottenham are. If you were to actually consider how much that Chelsea team cost, don’t forget that the manager cost over £10m, then you would have little hesitation in saying that they are under performing, or perhaps that Spurs are over performing.
Either way it proves that money isn’t everything. To say that of a team is apparent without my drawing attention to it. Tactics, management, team spirit and desire all factor in to the performances of a team. However more notable is the outperforming of stars worth £20m+ by players who cost as little as £0. Take Demba Ba for example. He cost Newcastle a grand total of £0. He is now the second top scorer in the league with fourteen goals.
Or you could look at Blackburn’s Yakubu who has scored twelve league goals who cost Blackburn a fee rumoured to be as little as £1.5m. In fact if you look at the top five league goal scorers then you have Rooney and Aguero in third and fourth place who cost around £70m between them but van Persie, Ba and Yakubu only cost a combined total of less than £5m.
Logical article