Back at the turn of the century – a phrase I dearly love to write because it makes me sound old – folks in the good old US of A had to watch Premier League football on a single channel, Fox Sports World. You rarely got live matches and instead were mostly treated to “Match of the Day” style recaps of the footballing events from the weekend. Back then television rights for Premier League football were dominated by the domestic providers Sky Sports, who had paid £670m for the three year deal taking them in to the new century. Meanwhile TV rights in the USA and elsewhere cost broadcasters a mere £25m.
Oh how things have changed! In the USA the Premier League has gone from a television show sandwiched between Gaelic Hurling and Dutch Eredivisie matches to being the glittering castle on the hill. NBC spent $1bn for their last deal, one which secured the rights to sell us viewers as the product to advertisers for six years. And if you doubt for a second that you, the viewer, are one of the products here, look no further than the “block party” NBC put on for their “derby day” coverage. In that segment they put the fans on display, showing them and their enthusiasm for the games off to the advertisers.
And in the UK, domestic rights are even bigger. As of the last TV contract, the Premier League hauled in £6bn in total TV rights money, £5bn of that from the domestic broadcasters.
But this isn’t a post about television rights or how you’re being sold as a product to advertisers. This is about how those rights have fundamentally transformed English football.
Net spend (purchases minus sales) has grown from £291m in 2009/10 to £915m in 2018 and we have yet to see how much Manchester United will spend in January after firing Jose Mourinho today. I expect them to plunk down at least a few bucks. And the same for many other teams looking to either avoid relegation or consolidate their table position. As a result, the Premier League will almost certainly top £1bn in transfer spend this season.
The other thing that’s crazy about all this is how many teams are now top spenders. In 2009/10 Man City went buck wild and spent £117m (net) on players. Forty-some million of that was spunked on Robinho, who scored 16 total goals for them and could easily be the worst transfer of all time, except that now days teams spend £40m on half-decent center backs.
But back to the point: in 2009/10 Man City’s £117m spend represented 40% of the League’s total transfer spend. In second place was Tottenham with almost £50m spent. Man U and Arsenal spent a combined £47m that season and Chelsea actually spun a profit that year off player sales of about £12m.
This season Liverpool were the big spenders. In an attempt to rip the Premier League title out of Pep Guardiola’s manic hands, the Scouse have spent £148m on new players. That’s a shit-ton of money, but it’s only 16% of the total net spend of the League. And the reason for that is Fulham, West Ham, Everton, Wolves, all of these teams are spending £60m+ net on player transfers. Fulham are particularly troubling, they have spent £94m this summer and may have to do some more spending if they want to stay up. That is CRAZY.
So, these television contracts have radically changed the way that teams spend on player transfer. It is now much more a League in which people “speculate to accumulate” as people like to say than it ever was before. The idea for some of these smaller clubs (like Fulham) is that if they spend, they will stay up, and get the next big TV contract payout. But what happens if they spend £95m and get relegated? How much of that spend will they be able to recoup in player sales this summer? It feels like a risky strategy for clubs like Brighton Hove and Albion to spend £54m on player transfers.
The other thing this data shows me is that the top six have a strangle-hold on this spend, which is only going to get worse as the latest overseas TV rights have been negotiated to payout on a sliding scale: the better your table position, the more overseas TV money your club makes.
I’m sorry if that chart above doesn’t display properly (the latest update to wordpress forces me to use blocks) but what it shows is incredible and I would describe it anyway (because that’s what I do).
First off, this is a chart showing the running total net spend on transfer from 2009 to 2018. My database has all clubs who have been in the League in that time but I cut it off at Wolves because that’s where I felt like cutting it off! The point is that the Premier League has spent… five billion, one-hundred and ninety four million, British Pounds (sterling) on player transfers. That’s net – purchase outlay minus income from player sales over the last decade.
And the big spenders are Keyser Söze: Man City have spent nearly a billion pounds in a decade and Man U have spent £710m. Below that, Chelsea have “only” spent £410m – which is a figure largely kept in check by their outstanding sales to China the last few years. Meanwhile, Liverpool’s game plan is very clear: spend spend spend. They spent £148m this season alone. That’s more than they spent in the first 7 seasons of this decade and 43% of their total outlay for 10 years, spent in one summer.
Arsenal and Everton are notable on this list. They are the canary in the coal mine, the bellwether teams, what I’m trying to say is that both have typically been the conservative spending clubs. Both clubs have always tried to break even and spend within their means.
Up till 2013 Arsenal spent just £38m total on transfers and Everton actually had a profit of £22m. Since then, the Gunners have spent £253m on players and Everton have spent £229m.
And if we look at just the last three seasons (since Jose Mourinho joined Man U) Everton have eclipsed Arsenal in net transfer spend. The Toffees have paid over £160m in player transfers since 2016, while Arsenal have “only” spent £149m.
Now, before you ask, Liverpool’s numbers are super weird because they have been able to sell off players for astronomical prices. If I just aggregate spend over the last three seasons, Liverpool’s transfer activities become clearer.
Liverpool have purchased £387m worth of players over the last three seasons. That’s 4th in the League. Also notice that Chelsea are 2nd in player purchases, buying £477m – again this shows how smart both of these clubs have been in their sales departments. Chelsea got £100m for Costa and Matic last season and they sold Oscar to Shanghai SIPG for £54m. How? I don’t know. We need an investigation. Meanwhile Liverpool extracted £54m out of Crystal Palace over two seasons for Benteke and Sakho, which should be considered a crime against humanity. That 2017/18 season where Liverpool sold Coutinho and Sakho and brought in van Dijk and Salah (and broke EVEN) was the best bit of business anyone has ever done in Premier League history.
The last question in all of this is how much longer can this go on? Domestic TV contracts have finally topped out but foreign rights continue to grow.
Foreign TV rights have only recently topped £1bn and I suspect that are due for a sharp jump upward when the League is able to negotiate with NBC in 2022. Until then, I expect that the League will stay at or around £1bn in player transfers every season. Once that new USA deal kicks in we could see another spurt of growth in transfers.
And just to put all of this into perspective, the Premier League spent £915m in transfers (net) this summer while la Liga spent net £143m, Serie A spent net £279m, and the Bundesliga made a net profit of £2m.
Source: transfermarkt.co.uk.
With all this money being spent by our rivals I fear we won’t be able to keep up unless we up our scouting. Are we still using StatsDNA? It seems like an utter failure seeing as it identified Elneny, Xhaka and Gabriel.
We’ve been atrocious in identifying u21-23 talent for too long and that has hurt our ability to sell off players for mega fees and I hope this ends with the new regime.
I’m a free marketeer and a capitalist. That said, I find it obscene the amounts of money being paid for player rights. You’re only discussing transfer fees, you haven’t even touched on the inflation in wages i.e the absurd wages being earned by the likes of Alexis Sanchez.
In 3 seasons at Arsenal Alexis Sanchez scored against every single Premier League team we faced. Do people understand how insane that is for a guy who wasn’t even a striker? Statistically he was a top-5 in Europe attacker.
In our last CL campaign he was involved in nearly every goal we scored. He was the only player on our side who efforlessly adapted to that higher level.
The fact that he’s out of form now doesn’t matter. If you don’t comprehend that Utd awarded him a contract based on what the market could bear, how can you call yourself a free marketeer?
500k/week is absurd when Lukaku is on 220k and Pogba 250k on the same team. If judgement was that Sanchez was twice the player, would bring twice the impact that either of those players on United would bring, then I guess. But never would that kind of money be paid to a player, regardless of ability, if a) there wasn’t an incomprehensible amount of money sloshing around and b) there wasn’t such a dramatic under-supply of elite level talent that would make United desperate to pay Sanchez that much money. It’s a Venn diagram intersection of stupidity. I’m convinced the bubble will burst and in 10 years we’ll be looking back and laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.
His reported salary figures are greatly inflated because of the signing bonus. British press are oddly obsessed with both demanding that players get paid huge salaries and then fudging the numbers to make it look like he’s a “waster”.
He’s paid probably what he should have been paid considering the fact that they didn’t spend much on his transfer.
There’s still a gap between what the top football players earn and what the top NFL or NBA guys earn, so maybe as more money comes into the game through tv deals, wages will actually keep rising?
I just don’t understand the idea that it’s the top earners always being attacked because their contracts are outrageous or wasteful or whatever. I think there’s plenty of players on smaller contracts than guys like Alexis who don’t provide ‘value for money’ if that’s the measure. And a bunch of them are British.
And whose money is exactly wasted here? The Glazers’? Please, cry me a river. I’d 100% rather see the players getting paid than some billionaire owners who leveraged the club and mounted their debt on it.
“That 2017/18 season where Liverpool sold Coutinho and Sakho and brought in van Dijk and Salah (and broke EVEN) was the best bit of business anyone has ever done in Premier League history”.
👆🏽This.
And don’t forget Suarez a couple of seasons earlier, even if, given what they got for Coutinho, Barca got a good deal.
Arsenal, by contrast have hung on to want-away players whose values have plummeted as their contracts expired. Sanchez, Ramsey, Ozil, Wilshere are leaving for free or next to nothing. One of the worst things about the late-Wenger reign. At full transfer market valuations, that 100m in asset value lost.
Im going to make prediction that gooners won’t want to hear. Lucas Torreira will be a Barcelona player in 4 years. But on the good side, we’ll have more than doubled our initial transfer fee spend on him.
100m? Conservative estimate. Say 50m for Sanchez, 40m for Ozil, 40m for Ramsey and 25m for Wilshere, and you’re at 155. Add Welbeck to the mix for a few quid and that’s money that could be plowed into a new defense, a top midfielder to replace both Ozil and Ramsey and some academy prospects.
It’s notable that during a period when we at Arsenal seemingly stopped buying South American talent, Liverpool’s ‘best bit of business in transfer history’, and Chelsea astronomical sums raised from player sales, all involved South American players.
Will be interesting to see whether Sven chooses to gamble on young South Americans over the next couple of windows with prospects like Joelinton, Pavon, and Firpo.
This skin sucks: the images render like dog shits.
This last bit of stat is astonishing!!!
“And just to put all of this into perspective, the Premier League spent £915m in transfers (net) this summer while la Liga spent net £143m, Serie A spent net £279m, and the Bundesliga made a net profit of £2m.”
Spurs thought that Arsenal and it’s supporters over-celebrated the derby league win, and they will come hard at us. This is a statement game for them.
They’re also our top 4 rival. The 3 standout teams are ‘Pool, City and Chelsea. All the rest, including us, are playing for the last Champions League spot and everything after.
I dunno. Spurs are highly incentivised to beat us. Emery’s team selection will be intriguing.
I think Chelsea and Spurs are at the same level, which is a little above us. 4th is an achievement, while 6th is an underachievemebt.
Very much a same old Arsenal match, dominating chances and possession but get caught pants down for most meaningful moment of the half.
Props to Ramsey, our best player by a mile, the only cutting edge in the final 3rd. And speaking of same old, two crunching fouls on Mkhi not called, one in the box. Lucas kicks his foot. It’s a foul. Should be penalty to Arsenal but we’re not allowed to get those.
Halftime
Behind, but we played ok. Should have taken the lead when Ramsey teed up Mhki. But (and this one of the reasons I have doubts about him in front of goal despite 2 last game)… you have the keeper two-thirds of the way across the goal to his right, and guess where Mhki chose to shoot… at saveable height and close to the keeper? He worked hard though, and has generally played well. Great save from the keeper to push Ramsey’s snapshot onto the post. Sokratis might have scored with a header too.
For their goal, Xhaka played Son onside. Till then, we’d concentrated on containing him, and AMN and Sokratis were doing a great job of it.
We have goals in us. They also have Kane. I think that Emery’s overplaying Auba and Torreira in this busy period, and we could pay for it later. This would have been a good game to start Lacazette, and keep Auba in reserve.
Oh and hopefully it’s clear by now that the Ozil back injury story was window dressing, with him not even making the squad for “tactical reasons”. Emery isn’t doing disingenuous diplomat on this. It is a real shame.
We were dull second half. And toothless creatively. In a way, that’s worse than losing.
Honestly, since Alli scored (a really good goal), we never looked like replying.
The fool who threw a water bottle at Alli should be banned for life. Certainly Arsenal will be fined.
That was a defensive masterclass from Spurs. All 11 worked together and covered each other for all 90. You could tell they really wanted this one, their focus and determination was first class. Arsenal acquitted themselves OK and dominated for large swathes of this match but couldn’t find enough openings in a truly impressive Spurs unit.
Not too bothered tbh. Not a great performance but we avoid having to play two extra matches against Chelsea in January
I thought the performance was fine, they were just a better team on the day. More incision in attack and more organization at the back. That said, we fell asleep from two long goal kicks (which were incredibly accurate, Gazzaniga deserves recognition for that) and two virtually identical busted offside traps from there and two good finishes from them 1v1 with our keeper which was something Mkhitaryan couldn’t do when 1v1 with theirs (Gazzaniga deserves recognition for THAT and his save from Ramsey which was a blinder). We defended them well from open play and transitions otherwise but in a way it was similar to the Soton game where they found the same opening more than once in the same game.
A few months back I said the real test of Emery will be when we lose two ro three in a row. Will he be able to get a response from the team, or will we go on an extended slide? These next 2 PL matches are going to be huge for us in determining how the season goes. We need to be on the upswing before Anfield. To me, 3 things are hampering us:
1) No Kola, no Hector means no offense. Their speed and width are sorely missed. It takes time to build that trust and connection between our wings and the FB’s, and we have little to no rhythm there at the moment.
2) We need Xhaka in the midfield. I don’t agree with weakening our midfield by moving him into a role where he’s not suited. We create 2 holes by doing this. Which relates to:
3) I never expected to miss Holding so much. Continuity in the back is what creates success. The juggling of players in the back (to be fair – the result of injury) has been the antithesis of continuity. Man marking and offisde traps fall apart when we lack cotinuity, as does our ability to play out from the back.
That said, I expect Kos to shake off the rust – maybe not to his prime form, but much more confident and assured in decision-making. And I expect Nacho to improve as well. If we are to have any hope of challenging for 4th, they will have to. Or we have to be very active in January. This is when it gets interesting.
I caveat the above with my contention that this game doesn’t mean all that much in terms of our season. No one will care how we did in the Carabao Cup by season’s end. But in terms of the teams’ confidence, it can be problematic. We played most of our top players AND we lost. I’d have been ok with one or the other, but not both.
Yes, bit of a wankers cup and will soon be well forgotten with Spurs & Chelsea now tied up in a two leg semi final.
The bottle throwing was very similar to the Theo one of a few seasons ago.
….and it only contained about three inches of water, so no damage to Deli who had a really terrific game. Can’t reproduce that for England though.
Yeah, there are mitigating circumstanced but this was a game that Emery wanted to win. He picked his best team. I don’t mind terribly being out of the competition either but the team has been on a bit of a skid lately and this plus the Ozil stuff won’t do much to pick up the confidence. Burnley will pose a tough test for a team struggling for goals at the moment, it took Chelsea 84 minutes to find a breakthrough against them. It’s very much a Mesut Ozil game because they will sit deep the whole time so if he doesn’t play in this one, well, that really would be the funeral toll for his Arsenal career.
Just reading about Rabiot being told he will sit out the rest of the season at PSG as punishment for not signing a new deal. Could we do an Ozil-Rabiot swap a la Sanchez-Mhykitaryan? Rabiot is not the same creative force but he’s younger and was really excellent under Emery.
I’d be up for that. PSG don’t need Ozil for the league but they might consider him as something extra for the CL. He would be a substantial upgrade over Guendouzi who I like but is very callow still.
We need other players besides our 2 elite strikers to reliably supply goals. When they are not firing, you need your goalscoring wide players — Iwobi and Mkhitaryan — to step up. Neither is up to the task. Mhki gets into good goalscoring positions, but misses far more than he scores. Yesterday against Spurs, he needed something likeThierry’s trademark curl. Dion Dublin on TV commentary described it as one of the worst 1v1 attempts he’s seen. Gazzaniga was excellent, but the shot was 2 feet to his right at saving height. His save from Ramsey’s snapshot WAS something special.
Against United, Mhki skied over from right under the bar. Against Chelsea, he skied one over the bar from the penalty spot. Yes he got 2 good goals against the Saints, so it feels a bit uncharitable to criticise him, but do a google search “Mkhitaryan miss”. He’d been doing this for a long time. He’s nudging 30. He’s not going to become more efficient. Iwobi? Said enough.
We miss Welbeck really badly. He was doing an outstanding job supplementing the main frontmen. Ozil is a really smart taker of goalscoring opportunities, so his rift with the coach is denying us goals. Whatever the coach thinks of his lack of contribution other areas, he’s losing goals and creativity. I really wish that Mesut had helped his cause with a more committed effort after giving away the ball against Southampton. Ramsey can get you goals too, and was unlucky not to score yesterday, but he’s not getting consistent minutes. It leaves they guys who are getting those minutes with the responsibility, and they’re not taking it.