With the January transfer window reaching the half-way point and various players making their comings and goings, I have started thinking about the state of the transfer market, and most importantly, the prices players are being passed around at by the big boys of football. By 'big boys' I am not referring to today's trophy winning teams such as Barcelona, but teams such as Man City who seem to have too much money for their own good. Chelsea were the culprits of seasons past and similarly were/are Real Madrid, with the focus on building a strong, experienced team in a matter of months seeming to be the aim.
I may be wrong here, but the fact that Edin Dzeko has recently moved from Wolfsburg to Man City for £27 million is rather bizarre. I personally do not see why a player who has not won anything of real world notability (a Bundesliga title and Bundesliga player of the year 08-09 prize being the exception), can be priced so highly. In 111 games he scored 66 goals. This is good, it cannot be denied, yet he is not the only player Manchester City have poured money into in this strange fashion. For example Joleon Lescott who signed for City in 2009 is, in this fans opinion, no where near the quality to have cost an estimated price of around £22-£24 million. The same applies for James Milner (£26 million), Nigel De Jong (£18 million), Emmanuel Adebayor (£25 million), all players who are of course 'good' but are not really good enough to make up for the money spent on them. Maybe the fact is that City just have so much money that these prices, which would stretch far beyond most clubs piggy banks, are a set standard. For me a player worth over £20 million is surely world class, forget Ronaldo's £120 million madness, for realistically £20 million is a lot of money.
I read yesterday that West Ham's Upton Park would be sold for £40 million should they move to the Olympic Stadium following the summer of 2012. This shocked me, for surely a player, a single player who's career with a certain club may not even last 5 years, cannot be worth three times what a stadium with over 100 years of history is.
In 1996 Alan Shearer signed for Newcastle for a world record fee of £15 million. Look at how the times have changed. I understand that the modern game has far more financial backing than that of 10 or 15 years ago, yet I do not understand why that leads to players prices rising so dramatically.
Thankfully the Premier League as a whole has seemed to gather some sense in recent years, as spendings have dropped significantly as a whole. Manchester City seem to be the only club throwing money around in England, and other clubs know this and of course do take advantage of it. The surrounding top 4-6 teams seem to have gained more sense, both due to debts to tackle and just general boring transfer attitudes (Arsene!), and have taken good steps towards building youth squads and working with what they have.
I'm not going to say this is a good thing, for I enjoy the transfer window immensely, yet would just rather that football would return to reality slightly. £120 million is a lot of money, enough to... you know... save the world or something...
Jesse
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