Looking at where we’ve been struggling this season there’s one obvious area – goalscoring. Suarez has more than pulled his weight in the central striker role but he’s had no support from his fellow strikers, the two men who play either side of him. I could be wrong but I think we’ve only had four goals from these positions so far (Sterling 2, Downing 1, Enrique 1) and that’s nowhere near enough, not even close. Then you start to look at who we let go in the summer and for me three names stick right out, Dirk Kuyt, Craig Bellamy and Maxi Rodrigez. In my opinion any one of these three playing every week in the Sterling / Downing /Borini roles would have had more than four goals by now on their own.
As I’ve already written in earlier posts I think bringing in younger, mainly British players is the right way forward, and the need to reduce the wage bill was great, but I think last summer we maybe attempted a little too much revolution rather than the gradual evolution that is normally the way football teams develop. I think at least one of the three experienced, proven senior professionals should have been kept to see out this season and aid in the transitional period we are currently going through. We brought in less than a million in transfer fees for the three of them combined so moving them on didn’t really bring us in much cash, though it did help bring our wage bill down – something that we needed to do now we don’t have Champions League football. Overall I’ve been quite impressed with the way FSG have taken a realistic view of where the club is at right now and cut our cloth accordingly.
Which brings me to my next observation.
I’ve been hearing so much over recent seasons about how much we’ve spent on transfer fees, but exactly how realistic are the figures quoted when people talk about football in the pub or in the workplace? Especially when it comes to Liverpool. I’m going to have a look at three cases, but please note that all of the figures I’m using are what I’ve got from the press, there is nothing official and I’ve no insight into actual player wages.
The thing I’ve been hearing a lot recently, especially before and after last weekend’s game at Old Trafford, is Van Persie cost the same as Suarez. Let’s have a look at that in a little more detail. According to the media Van Persie cost £24million and is paid £200,000 per week over a four year contract. Adding the transfer fee and wages together comes to a total of just over £65million for one man for four seasons of football (working out at around £16million per season). Given his age it’s reasonable to expect he will see out his career at Man Utd, meaning they will receive no transfer fee for the player as he leaves.
Suarez cost £23million, was paid £30,000 per week for a year and a half and then £90,000 per week for a further four years, giving a grand total for the deal of about £45million for five and a half seasons of football (working out at around £8million per season – half that of Van Persie). Looking at Suarez’ age and ability we could choose to sell him in a couple of years for approximately £40million to the right buyer, that would mean that even if we paid him his contract in full having him at our club would have cost us around £5million for three and a half to four seasons, meaning his services would have cost us in total just over £1million per season.
Then we have Fernando Torres. We paid approximately £21million to Atletico Madrid, paid him around £100,000 per week for three and a half years, costing us all in all £39million for three and a half seasons work (just over £11million per season). But then we sold him. For £50million. Giving us a profit on the player of about £11million (meaning we actually GAINED around £3million for every season of football he played for us, not to mention the memories and goals he gave us).
This opens up a whole new debate (which I won’t go into now) about whether this makes a club a ‘selling club’ or if it’s ‘well run and financially responsible’ but I think the figures are interesting reading.
The potential sell-on value of a player makes a huge difference to most clubs when they make a new signing and for this reason I’m fairly sure we won’t be bringing in Wesley Sneijder despite the rumours. He’s 29 years old and if we pay £8million and give him £150,000 per week for four years it will total almost £40million with little chance of recouping any of that money by selling him again and that’s far beyond what we should be spending on one player right now. In short four seasons of Sneijder would cost us £50million MORE than three and a half seasons of Torres, and it’s very doubtful he would have as great an impact as the once feared Spaniard.
No comments:
Post a Comment