Quick net spend roundup

And the top spender so far this season is… Liverpool.

Using data from Transfermarkt.co.uk, Liverpool have spent an estimated £150m net this season buying Alisson, Keita, Fabinho, and Shaqiri. There are some questions about Alisson’s hands, Keita’s attitude, and whether Fabinho will be another Monaco bust but you can’t deny that after a season in which they came so close, but for a few goalkeeping errors, to a Champions League title, Liverpool went out and purchased players that they needed.

That takes their total net spend over the last five years to £230m. That’s net, mind, and includes the sales of Coutinho, etc. That’s also 4th highest net spend over the last five years.

Third highest net transfer spend over the last five years is Arsenal at about £250m. After a decade in which the club claimed poverty, Arsenal opened the dry powder tin with the purchase of Mesut Ozil. Since then, the spend has been pretty consistent. The Gunners spent £70m this summer on Torriera, Guendouzi, Leno, and Sokratis but I expect a few sales will bring that number down.

Second highest net transfer spend over the last five years is still United. After the orgy of spending following Checkbook Tony Pulis’ arrival in 2015/16, they added another £50m to the total this summer when they bought Fred from Shakhtar Donetsk.  A strange signing with a huge payday for former Arsenal midfielder (who is now Fred’s agent) Gilberto Silva. Fred was banned from football until just recently for a failed doping test. Also, Man U have a quite stocked midfield which features World Cup winner Paul Pogba, so what Mourinho is up to is a mystery.

Not to be outdone, Man City topped both the League table and the League Net Spend table pumping out a whopping £580m over the last five years. In that time they have won one Premier League title and two League Cups. But there’s no doubt that Pep Guardiola will have his eye on the Champions League. This season they landed Riyad Mahrez from Leicester City for £60m and sold off some unknown players for £25m. The 37m outlay this season (they also bought a guy for 2m) is a pinch when you consider that they spent 200m last season and 160m the season before.

Incredible spenders, Man City.

Anyway, the season is still a few weeks away and there are more transfers on the horizon. New Arsenal manager Unai Emery is working hard every day to get his team ready to face Man City on opening day. Man City manager, Pep Guardiola is equally working hard and says that his team will be ready, despite the World Cup hangovers for many of his players. Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, has admitted that his team need to win something for once. And Man United manager Jose Mourinho is moaning like a drain.

Finally, one weird transfer note: Tottenham haven’t done any business. They spent zero pounds this summer (no sales, no purchases) and over the last five years have a net transfer spend of around £30m. That’s truly incredible. They have entered the “remember when Arsenal had no money to spend?” phase. The trick here now for them is to hang on to all of their players then, and just like the National team that they represented this summer, they might be able to finish fourth.

Qq

56 comments

    1. Hi Shane, thanks for the feedback. I guess I said something bad about a manager/club that you really like or maybe I didn’t put enough work into this article for your liking. Either way, remember that this is just a blog. Not every post is going to be game-changing, brilliant, insightful, or hard-hitting. Especially during the summer doldrums. Some articles are just going to be me looking at and coolating some data, like this one.

      Anyway, the content here is completely free, there aren’t even any annoying advertisements, you are also free to leave, to not make a comment, or to offer some constructive criticism. If you can’t do any of those things you are totally free to go fuck yourself.

      Have a great day!

      1. I think you should not worry. There are always people to hit the Minus button, sometimes only because they can.

        The roundup was actually quite informative and well presented. It is interesting to observe the overall decrease in spendings. Maybe it is because of the shorter window, but to me it probably shows some maturing of the big spenders. Both Liverpool and City have built the backbone of how they wanted the team to look like, and now are just upgrading and replacing here and there. United probably simply didn’t find where to throw away their money, after allegedly CRonaldo snubbed them. I still expect them to spend 50m somewhere just to be true to their name.

  1. Liverpool have bought well. No half-measures. VVD, Allisson, Keita and Fabinho are top rank players. They already had pace and power to burn, now they have more. They’re going to run and harry most teams off the park.

    Puzzled by the reported size of our transfer budget this window. Very low. Has this ever been confirmed by the club?

  2. Liverpool have done fantastically well this window, and at the moment you’d have to back them to push City all the way for the title.

    Tottenham are heading into some post-build austerity years, so I’m not sure they’ll be making any big moves in the transfer market. They’d probably argue they don’t need to, what with Golden Boot Kane, World Cup Winner Lloris, and World Cup Revelation Trippier in their side. They’d also probably argue that should they need to buy players, they could sell Kane to Madrid for £120 million and use the cash to buy three whirled class players. Depends on how Levy wants to manage the debt.

    I could see us finishing 5th or even 6th again, even though I’m hoping for the fourth-place trophy. I think we’ll come out flying against City (and win) and possibly Chelsea as well, but let’s not forget this season is one of adaptation and there will be hiccups, just as there were in Klopp’s first season. Next season is where I’ll be expecting fourth or higher.

  3. Btw, Thierry Henry looks set to manage Aston Villa this season. Interesting.

  4. Would be interesting to see where Chelsea lie in this round up. I have a feeling their net spending will continue to shrivel as long as Roman’s visa is an issue

    1. Chelsea is a big unknown and we’re only three weeks out.

      Sarri is a magician – will he be able to bring that magic to a squad with a want-away Hazard, Courtois, Willian and possibly Kante? If he keeps all of them and gets them to play the way he had Napoli playing… yikes.

    2. According to Napoli’s President, Sarri is trying to dismantle Napoli into suitcase size pieces and smuggle them into England.

  5. Slightly OT…

    I had a brief look at Sokratis against Borehamwood. I have to see him play again, before I shake this feeling that premiership attackers will give him the heebie jeebies, at least for a half season until he adjusts to the league. Admittedly, one half of a friendly football match against lowly opposition at a time players are still shaking off postseason cobwebs is far from being enough info. And even Koscielny had a few hairy moments at the start of his time at Arsenal.

    But I do think that short term, expectations of slotting him straight into the back line are going to have to be tempered. It’s why I think we’ll keep Mustafi for his experience, even if we’re way overloaded at CB. I reckon it’s between Mustafi, Mavropanos and Chambers for the 2 CB slots against City.

    Good news is Auba has looked razor sharp, and looks like he has a lot of goals in him this season.

    1. To this point, Arsene used to say that 3 changes or more to a squad or First XI are too many and disruptive. There’s been a heck of a lot of churn since the start of the year, including a new coach. Leno and Torreira are almost certainly regular starters. Will Ramsey still be here? Interesting to see how the dynamic shifts.

      1. Said the guy who never changed his number two until he retired for health reasons.

        Leicester city retired that myth didn’t they, when they lined up with four new first team players in their title winning season.

        It’s not whether three players is too many but rather are they an upgrade on whom they are replacing in my view.

        In Arsenal’s case this remains to be seen I suppose.

    2. Yeah, he didn’t exactly look comfortable in that game, did he? Not encouraging. Although, I think at that point he had only recently joined up with his teammates in training, so let’s hope it was a lack of fitness more than anything. Will be good to have another look at him this weekend and next against good opposition.

    3. Yes, Sokratis had a couple of shaky moments in that match but I am not concerned. Given the manner in which we attacked last year, with BOTH fullbacks bombing up at the same time, I don’t care who we could’ve had at CB, they would’ve been exposed. I truly think our back 4, or 3 looked weak because we played a high line but didn’t press well enough, or track back well enough. We played a lot of square balls along the 18 yard line extended – 1 intercepted pass and a diagonal release and we were in trouble. My hope is that we play a better, more structured defensive style of game this year.

  6. Surprised to know Liverpool are 4th on the list even after their completely outrageous sales in the past few seasons. A bit worried that Arsenal look like the underachievers of the group of 5 considering how a top club we were with consistent UCL place finishes before the 5 yr period. Having a trophy or top 4 finish this year would do a lot to make up for it.

  7. TH14 at Villa? For real? I hope Prince William is happy as all the other royals are Arsenal supporters.

    So on the Premier League spend, is FFP dead now? Was it all a big joke?

  8. I was very interested to see a pre-season Pool team play Borussia Dortmund. So far BD has won 2 ICC games (Man City and Pool) and their young team has looked very sharp. I’ve been impressed with how they’ve played out of the back against presses. I will say that once Van Dijk went off for the second half, Pulisic and BD absolutely tore through Pool’s central defense. BD bypass the press and voila, they just had CBs to face.
    Keita looks to want to get forward a lot ala Ramsey.

  9. Speaking of spending, Barcelona were so hot for Willian and then they turned around and basically stole Malcolm from the plane taking him to Roma.
    So where does this put Dembele on the depth chart? Hmmm.

    AC Milan is being very close to the vest on a permanent CEO appointment. If Gazidis leaves Singapore before the team does then I would be worried.

  10. I would like to see people like Mueller and Kroos come out in support of Özil besides Rudiger and King Poldi.

    1. Just to add a bit of context here, I don’t want to get too deep into this as I find the whole thing sad and depressing as it is. It has been diminished in the discussion here but the issue with Özil and his statement over his Erdogan pics has been a much bigger issue, apparetnly also in the dressing room. It did not go over well and especially him staying silent over it until his statemnts in his highly monetized and branded feelgood Instagram channel. His explanation there has been half-assed. It doesn’t take away much from the rest of his statement which I absolutely agree with.

  11. £40m for Richarlison. wtf? Richarlison? 38 appearances for Watford, 5 goals, 4 assists. Forty million.

    Is it one price for Everton, etc.?

  12. I was thinking about Tottenham and their spending freeze due to the new stadium. compared to ours back then. I think they are quite lucky to undergo that project now, when the cash injected in PL from TV rights is so big. Looking back at the Television revenue for the season 2006/7, all the clubs in the league have received together 502.5m GBP. Arsenal has received 29m. For the 2017/18 season the total amount is 2,419.6m and Tottenham has received 144.4m.

    Considering that the construction costs of the Emirates has been 390m GBP, today’s revenue figures look so out of proportion.. 2 seasons’ TV income + 1 Gareth Bale = 1 Emirates stadium…
    There is also the other side, of course. Tottenham’s new ground will not cost 390m. The figures I read are in the range of about 800m, with tendency to rise. But still, it is 2 to 2.5 times more than Arsenal’s costs back then, while the TV income is 5 times bigger..
    So overall I think that Tottenham are luckier than us and will recover from the austerity burden quicker than we did, considering that the trend of cash inflow continues and this football money bubble doesn’t burst all of a sudden.

    But in any case, for the time being they will have to tighten their belts and save. This means restrictive purchases and salary caps. Will they manage to survive that period, no matter how short(er) it will be? We had Wenger, and his approach was to find and use young, but talented players. Tottenham so far seem to try to hold on to their golden generation. But how long more can it last? Even if they believe that Kane loves the club so much that he will play for free there for the rest of his life, how will they manage to keep people like Alli, Eriksen and the new national heroes Trippier and Dier? When some of them leaves, would they be able to replace it with someone as good, but willing to play for less than 100k per week? from this perspective the “hyperinflation” of football money will hurt them harder..

    1. sp*s have not bought a new player in 2 seasons. Pochettino was trying to get Levy to sign new players early in the window. sp*s extended the contracts of Lamela (often injured), Kane, Son, Sanchez and Vorm and now Pochettion proclaims those moves are like new signings. Fake news.

      1. Haven’t bought a player in 2 years???
        Sp*rs bought in Sanchez, Aurier, and Llorente last yr. Lucas Moura from PSG in Jan. And according to transfer markt they also bought an Argentine U-20 defender Juan Foyth. Net spend was £-15.93m largely due to Pep’s full back largesse last summer.
        https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/tottenham-hotspur/transfers/verein/148/saison_id/2017/pos//detailpos/0/w_s//plus/1#zugaenge
        Bought Sissoko, Wanyama, Janssen, & Georges-Kevin N’Koudou in 16/17. The latter 2 returned from loan this summer.
        https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/tottenham-hotspur/transfers/verein/148/plus/1?saison_id=2016&pos=&detailpos=&w_s=
        Even if you want to exclude the 2 loanees & the yute defender that’s at least 6 first team players bought over the last 2 years before they add anybody else this summer. Surely, they’ll strengthen. No way Poch extends otherwise.
        Now, this is the most I ever want to type about Sp*rs in my life lol.

  13. https://www.arsenal.com/news/club-statement-ivan-gazidis

    That statement from the Sir Chips is about as weak as they come as it says nothing about his staying at the club in the future nor is there an outright denial that he is under consideration for AC Milan.

    http://www.ilsole24ore.com (A tier 2 source, Ornstein is an example of a tier 1 source) says that Gazidis will become the new CEO of AC Milan.

    Gazidis would get more money but not necessarily a bigger player budget at AC Milan. The club has been tainted by scandal (Calcipoli) in the past, retained its Europa League place after Elliot took over and presented a more sensible financial plan for AC Milan’s future than the previous Chinese investor and company (Mirabelli and Fassone).
    At present, AC Milan has 2 recognized star players, Donnarumma and Bonucci. Rumors now have AC Milan trying to engineer a swap of Bonucci back to Juve for Caldara and bring in a 30 yo Higuain. Rodriquez maybe on the move. They may be trying to get Conte to replace Gattuso when he can clear his legal wrangle with Chelsea. Elliot is only allocating ’50 million’ for transfers at the present time.

    Gazidis has to consider whether he can work with a tempestuous Conte, work in a league without the financial income of the EPL and for owners who are profit-driven and will in all likely hood sell out when the right offer comes along.

    1. I thought so too about the statement. That thing was legalled to death. A non-denial denial.

    2. You are right that club’s statement doesn’t really sound like a denial, but on the other hand why would they bother putting one, if they are aware that Gazidis is leaving? It sounds to me like a “denial with an open door”, because in the end nobody except Ivan knows for sure what will be his decision.

      As to the transfer budgets and financial situation in Milan, I don’t think that budgets for players and squad problems has anything to do with a decision for a CEO position. This is for the head coach. CEOs payment and incentives will be fixed and it will have nothing to do with transfer budgets. Obviously Milan are ahead of reorganization, and hiring an experienced person to lead that process is maybe the most important thing.

    3. Gazidis has also just overseen the biggest managerial restructuring in the club’s history, and the appointment of the first new manager in 2 decades. If he left, he won’t be doing anything any other CEO wouldn’t do. But he’d be showing a lack of principle.

  14. Bit jealous of Atletico. They got both Gelson Martins and Thomas Lemar, two players we wanted, if reports are true. Great pace out wide. And they kept Griezmann. And they have Costa, Spain’s best classic CF. That’s some attack.

    Great squad too… Koke, Hernandez (a revelation for France in Russia), Felipe Luis (who only the great Marcelo is keeping out of Brazil’s first XI), Godin, Gimenez…

    I reckon theyre going to run the big boys close.

    1. yep. Simeone continues to do a borderline miraculous job there. I don’t love his style of football, but you have to admire the job he’s done.

      1. I cannot admire something that I truly dislike watching. I can give him credit for being able to win some trophies, and this is as far as I can go.

  15. claude, i hear you about sokratis. when arsenal signed him, i mentioned that i didn’t believe he was a good fit for the bpl. a player like jamie vardy is going to rip his heart out.

    dortmund signed a young cb last summer named zagadou from psg. i think he was supposed to replace marc batra at center back but i saw him play at left back last season when marcel schmelzer was injured. he also played center back in the league a few times when sokratis wasn’t available and looked okay. however, i watched him play the icc games against liverpool and man city last week and the boy looked good. dortmund looks like they got selling sokratis right, especially for the money arsenal gave them. we’ll see.

    it was only one half of a game but we’ll see how sokratis works out. i’m on record saying i have little confidence in either of leno, sokratis, or torreira finding success in the bpl. we’ll see something starting tomorrow.

    1. remember players like jerome boateng and gerard pique when they played in manchester? they didn’t do too well. sokratis gives me that same feeling.

    2. They got Zagadou for free! Wow, does PSG bleeds a ton of youth talent.
      I thought Akanji played really well for Swiss during the WC. And now, they’ve also bought Diallo, the French U-21 Captain we were linked with earlier this summer.
      Dortmund have the buy low, sell high game down pat.

    3. They bought Diallo from Mainz, a former Monaco youth prospect who’s looking very good and is going to be the direct replavcement. Zagadou is more of a longterm project.
      BTW the semi-annual kicker player ranking, which is usually quite good, came out this week, Leno came in 9th at goalies. Yann Sommer came in first as having the best half-season.

  16. 17 yo Smith-Rowe ‘walks’ through 3 AM players to score from outside the box to score top shelf, 1-1.

  17. 1. We are trying a new play-it-out-the-back style, but our defenders have a lot of work to do to beat the press when we play that way. It looked like a foreign language to Chambers, for example. It was just brain dead on Ramsey’s part to try to dribble it out of a crowded 6 yard box. wth was he thinking?

    2. Leno is better suited to sweeper/keeper than Cech, although the old guy performed decently today.

    3. Guendouzi is a Fabregas-type young player , in that he demands the ball and likes to dictate. When he bulks up, he’ll be some player. Clear on the vids that Auba and Laca are helping him to integrate, which is nice to see.

    4. Smith-Rowe looked the best of the youngsters and constructed and took his goal well. The others looked unexceptional today.

    5. Sokratis looked more comfortable today in the half hour run-out he got. But he’s short for a central defender. In fact, we lack good, tall defenders. Mavro and Holding have decent height. Holding got turned much too easily for the cross for the goal.

    1. Not to get too carried away or anything, but my bold prediction for the future: ESR will the first player ever to win the Ballon D’Or twice in the same year.

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