It only seems like last week that that the football season ended as it has rarely been out of the news, and it is now less than a month to the start of the next season - at least in England.
With the amount of money that Real Madrid started throwing around once the transfer window opened and with the riches available to Manchester City it looked like this was going to be the silliest season in the transfer market for years if not ever. However to date, whilst much money has been spent, the spending has not reached the sort of proportions that could have been expected. Of course the transfer window stays open until the end of August and so this could just be a calm before the storm scenario but I am starting to think that maybe Chairmen are reigning in the purse strings in the current economic climate.
Sir Alex Ferguson has already stated that the spending at Manchester United is complete which means that they have made a tidy profit from the sale of Ronaldo which no doubt is pleasing to the Glazer family. Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal of the other big three teams have all made signings but nothing to compare with the scale of Manchester City in the Premier League.
As a Spurs supporter I have got used to them being linked with just about every player on the market but that has not been the case this year - even with the ultimate wheeler-dealer Harry Redknapp at the helm this summer. Of the other teams challenging the Big 4 oligopoly Aston Villa have signed Stuart Downing but Everton, Fulham and West Ham have all been fairly quiet to date with Sunderland and their new Chairman seeming to be the only team prepared to spend big bucks this summer.
I mentioned above that some of this may be down to Chairmen restricting the budgets of their managers because of the current recession and any purchases having to be balanced by sales. However, there could be footballing reasons behind the lack of activity. Most of the top managers have been around for a long time at the top of the game and may have noticed that buying a team does not guarantee success but it is better to develop existing squads. If we look at the history of the premier league Blackburn was a team that was bought for the purpose of winning the leage which it did once and then faded away. The only other team that was bought was Chelsea but probably to a lesser extent as the team had been being built before Mourinho's arrival and was already firmly established in the Top 4 and therefore in the Champions League before Abramovich's billions became available - at the time considered to be why he bought the team in the first place.
If we look again at the history of the premier league there have only been two managers who have built teams over time and they have been the most successful - Ferguson and Wenger. Whilst both have bought big names the vast majority of their players have either been developed "in-house" or bought young and slightly unproven so that they could be developed. This has had two key benefits. Firstly, the teams have matured together and secondly they always seem to make a big profit when they sell a player on.
The final thing I have noticed is that much of the money being spent by premier league clubs seems to be on purchases from other English clubs - mainly other premier league sides or championship clubs. Of course the reason for this could be down to the current strength of the Euro versus Pound Sterling but whatever the reason it has to be good for English football as should help further investment in the academies.
So other than Manchester City - where Mark Hughes is apparently taking a Kevin Keegan approach to squad building by only buying strikers - the transfer policies of most premier league clubs is quite sensible for a change. I do recognise that these words might come back to haunt me but just maybe they won't.
No comments:
Post a Comment