During the latest episode of The Price of Football podcast, football finance expert Kieran Maguire spent some time talking about Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg’s move from Southampton to Tottenham Hotspur and Kyle Walker-Peters’ move from Spurs to the Saints and he explained why the two clubs did two separate transfers for these players, as opposed to a swap-plus-cash deal.
Hojbjerg joined Spurs from Southampton for £15m back in August while Walker-Peters joined Southampton from Spurs ‘in a separate deal for £12m’, as explained by The Independent.
During this recent edition of The Price of Football podcast, Maguire was asked why these deals were done separately instead of as a “£3m swap” deal and the football finance expert then shed light on the reasoning behind that decision, saying: “The reason why the players have been valued the way they are, is that it allows both clubs to report sizeable profits on their sales.
“We amortise the cost of the players over the life of the contract, so whilst it’ll be £15m and £12m going as the cost of the players, they will be spread over 4-5 years, so it’s only going to be £2-3m as a cost going out, but both Spurs and Southampton can report large profits on the sale of those players.
“So, that’s money which counts towards FFP.”
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TIF Thoughts…
So, as can be seen in what Maguire had to say, it seems that Spurs and Southampton were quite smart in how they did these two deals, as they can both benefit from the sale of these players in terms of the profits that they can report and in terms of FFP.
As a result, we feel that it is understandable why the two clubs did these deals in this way, despite the fact that these transfers initially appear to be similar to a swap deal.