The Premier League Thread

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**** yeah DD started Jim Whyte is here. Looks like hes just sniffed a fat one and popped a ******. Good to go! :P
 
Palace went mad this window. Where are the funds for transfers coming from? And why they weren't available when Pulis was in charge?
 
This is a disaster for SSN so many gum faces. Bet they cant wait for it to be over. Especially after the big build up LOL.
 
Etoo on the move again..

Samuel Eto’o is ready to quit Sampdoria just a week after completing his move from Everton.

The Cameroon international clashed with coach Sinisa Mihajlovic after he refused to attend an extra training session following Sampdoria’s 5-1 defeat to Torino, in which he made his debut as a 71st-minute substitute.

The two held crisis talks after Eto’o elected to travel back to Milan, where he and his family are currently based, instead of train with the squad.

The relationship between player and coach have since completely broken down and the club are now considering terminating the former Inter and Barcelona striker’s two year contract by mutual consent, just one week after the 33-year-old joined the club.

Sampdoria officials refused to confirm reports of the bust-up, insisting Eto’o missed the session because of personal reasons.

Mihajlovic, however, has revealed there is a problem but insists it was entirely of Eto'o's making.

“In order to have a row, you need two people and quite frankly Eto’o did everything himself,” Mihajlovic told Mediaset.

“He just left. He told the club and it has shown a lack of respect for me and the entire team.

“I don’t know what the club intends to do."
 
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around a couple things, so if someone with more knowledge about the subject(s) could pit in, it'd be much appreciated:

1. How on earth does Chelsea manage to sell a player like Luiz for £50m, Schürrle for ~£25m, De Bruyne for £18m? Basically, buying players below market value and selling them above market value. Yes, I'm aware that PSG are filthy rich, but £50m? Really? Schürrle was nothing more than a rotation player, yet they sell him to Wolfsburg for £6-7m more than they bought him for? And De Bruyne, also nothing more than a rotation player at best, bought for ~£7m and sold him to - again - Wolfsburg for £18m.

Now, I'm not claiming there's a huge conspiracy here or anything, I don't have any proofs to back up such claims so it would be stupid to do so. But is it entirely impossible that there are money being paid out under the table between clubs? Even FIFA has a ****** reputation these days, especially with the whole Qatar thing. Most owners of big football clubs these days are, first and foremost, business men. White-collar crimes among business men aren't exactly hard to imagine, I assume most people can agree on that part. With the money involved in modern day football, I honestly would be surprised if such crimes did NOT occur. Bear in mind I'm not singling out any clubs per sé - if I'm singling out anyone, it's the owners. And we all know what kind of business man Abramovich is.

2. The sponsorship deals of Manchester United, namely those of Chevrolet and Adidas. Sure, Man. United can be claimed to be one of the biggest clubs there are, if not THE biggest. They get roughly £50m per year from the Chevrolet deal, while other clubs - even the big ones - usually cap at around £30m. From Adidas they will be scraping in about £75m per year. Again, most other clubs cap at around £30m. That's 250% more than the next biggest earner.

Still, the Chevrolet deal is the one that baffles me the most: Adidas are a worldwide brand, Chevrolet is not. What on earth are Chevrolet thinking? Manchester United aren't big in the States, "soccer" itself is barely big at all. Manchester United are a European team, and Chevrolet aren't that big in Europe either. If GM wanted to promote their cars in Europe, why not go for Vauxhall/Opel? Do they want to increase their market value in Asia, as Man. United are big there? I don't think I could find a single market analysist that has good projections for Chevrolet in Asia. The man behind it all, Joel Ewanick, claimed it was the "biggest no-brainer" he'd seen. General Motors obviously disagreed, as he was let go just weeks after confirming the deal.

Again, I'd like to point out I'm not singling out the clubs here, I'm talking about the owners, the business men, the suits with the cheque books. So please, no butthurting over the examples I've made. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples here, including the businesses of Real Madrid and Barcelona, but this is a Premier League thread. I'm basically just asking a simple question: Is it possible that white-collar crime such as money laundering, Ponzi schemes and bribery are occuring on a regular basis in modern day top football? Personally I'd have to say yes, with not much doubt either. The only question for me is in what degree, how often, by whom, and if it ever will be revealed. I'm just saddened to see how modern football is evolving in this aspect. It's a multibillion dollar industry, and to assume there's no money-related crime in such a business would, to me, be naive.

Any thoughts on this? Perhaps from someone with more knowledge about the financial side of football?
 
mersk said:
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around a couple things, so if someone with more knowledge about the subject(s) could pit in, it'd be much appreciated:

1. How on earth does Chelsea manage to sell a player like Luiz for £50m, Schürrle for ~£25m, De Bruyne for £18m? Basically, buying players below market value and selling them above market value. Yes, I'm aware that PSG are filthy rich, but £50m? Really? Schürrle was nothing more than a rotation player, yet they sell him to Wolfsburg for £6-7m more than they bought him for? And De Bruyne, also nothing more than a rotation player at best, bought for ~£7m and sold him to - again - Wolfsburg for £18m.
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Ok, let's start with the idea that we bought these players for less than market value. Luiz cost us a considerable amount + Matic. He wasn't a cheap deal. Likewise, Schurrle cost us 18m. When we bought them, they were highly touted youngsters at 2/3rd tier European clubs. No one knew if they were going to actually develop into stars; both of them had faults that could stop them from fulfilling their undoubted potential. From the selling club's point of view, keeping hold of players like that when sizable offers come in is a risk. The player could bomb in a year's time and be worth half that, but if you sell them now you can use that money to get a solid replacement+ another prospect in. Also, don't forget that these types of players are likely to be unhappy if they're forced to stay.

Then there's De Bruyne. He represents the same essential idea, but the next step down in terms of ability and in terms of stature. He was very good at Genk, but no one was sure if it would translate well into the big leagues. So, the same reasons I just mentioned applied to him, just to an even greater extent. Salah is another example of this.

You'll notice that there's a pattern here. We buy talent at all levels, develop it, then sell it on, picking up the cream for ourselves. It's not flawless, but that's the idea.

The actual sales themselves are relatively simple. We're very careful with FFP, and we've been steadily increasing our revenue over the past few years. This means that we rarely need to sell to buy. When we do, we have a choice for who to sell. It's relatively simple economics: when a seller has a surplus of high quality goods, there is a demand for said goods and the seller has no need to part with their stock, they have the power. It doesn't matter if those goods aren't especially valuable to us, because we have control of the situation.

Now, I'm not claiming there's a huge conspiracy here or anything, [...] it would be stupid to do so.
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Yep.
 
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Yes, I'm aware of Chelsea's transfer policy. It's clever/cynical, no doubt about that. As for buying under market value and selling over market value, I'm aware that you paid a lot for Luiz. In his case it was in fact more than his market value. But then again, selling him for almost twice his market value had a certain FM feel to it imo, and the kind of thing you usually only see done by AI clubs with too much money for their own good. You could probably compare it with the purchase of Fernando Torres, although his market value at the time actually was pretty close to the £50m Abramovich parted with. With that in mind, the Torres purchase made more sense than PSG's Luiz purchase, even though it in retrospect might seem like a silly deal.

As for De Bruyne and Schürrle, it's not the fact that there's a certain element of risk-taking on Chelsea's part I'm pointing out here. It's the fact that Wolfsburg, on both occasions, paid more than market value (according to transfermarkt.com) for players that were far from key players, and at best rotation players. Of course, you could argue that it's just bad business on Wolfsburg's part, but again, that's not the point here. These were just examples to illustrate the point I was making, which was summarized in the last paragraph of my post.

In any case, your post comes off as more of a "I feel the need to defend my club" than anything else, which in itself is fine. But you fail to answer the actual question my post was leading up to. I pointed out twice that I'm not looking to single out any clubs, so if there's no attack then there's also nothing to defend.
 
Wat. I'm not defending it, I don't even agree with it: it's borderline exploitative and more should done to regulate top clubs hoovering up talent purely for financial gain.

You asked why Chelsea got such good deals for those players. I told you why, it's just basic supply vs demand theory. You're way too obsessed with this notion of an arbitrary "market value".
 
Subtle said:
Wat. I'm not defending it, I don't even agree with it: it's borderline exploitative and more should done to regulate top clubs hoovering up talent purely for financial gain.

You asked why Chelsea got such good deals for those players. I told you why, it's just basic supply vs demand theory. You're way too obsessed with this notion of an arbitrary "market value".
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Well that's good, that means we're in agreement on that part at least. Though I didn't say you were defending "it", I said your post came off as a defence of Chelsea, in that you only adressed the part about Chelsea and immediately introduced the club as "we". It was just the impression I got; not necessarily the impression you wanted to give. No biggie.

I'm not obsessed with anything here, but how on earth is one supposed to discuss transfer values without at the same time looking at market values? That's what everyone does, from "we paid too much for that player" and "**** that was a real bargain" to your "such good deals". You can't have good deals unless you're at the same time referring to market values - that's what makes the deals good.

Anyway, in an effort to steer this back to where it started: Do you believe that all deals that go through are purely a matter of "supply and demand", as simple as that? No grey zones are being exploited, and no financial crimes are being committed?
 
How can one even determine the market value of the player? It's entirely depended on the willingness of one club to sell and how much the opposing party wants to buy the player. De Bruyne and Schurrle may have been rotational players for Chelsea but they would be key important players for Wolfsburg. Couple that with the fact that Chelsea are absolutely under no pressure to sell and that leads to the high transfer fee

To somehow extrapolate white collar crime from this simple idea is slightly bordering on absurd. I am sorry but regardless of what type of businessman you feel Roman is, their is a perfectly fair theory to justify why these players moved for the sums they did
 
Alcaraz said:
How can one even determine the market value of the player?
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That'd be a question for transfermarkt. One they have already answered, in fact. You can read their answer here, in bold: Transfer Market | RedCafe.net

Alcaraz said:
To somehow extrapolate white collar crime from this simple idea is slightly bordering on absurd. I am sorry but regardless of what type of businessman you feel Roman is, their is a perfectly fair theory to justify why these players moved for the sums they did
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What type I "feel" he is? Now that is the absurd part. If you're not aware of his financially acrobatic background, I'd be happy to provide some links for you. Besides, these were - as emphasized several times already - just examples to illustrate a point. Again I'm finding myself answering to a post that failed to answer the question my first post posed, so I'll quote myself here: Do you believe that all deals that go through are purely a matter of "supply and demand", as simple as that? No grey zones are being exploited, and no financial crimes are being committed?

EDIT: And just for the record, in case I didn't make it clear enough: I'm not saying that these examples are in any way "proof" of any white-collar criminal activity. For all I know these are perfectly legitimate transfers. But this is the whole point: "For all I know". Because we don't really know, do we? We don't know the extent of such activity, just as we don't know the extent of doping in football. And as long as we don't know, there's nothing to be done about it. And in that regard I agree completely with Subtle when it comes to limiting big clubs' hoarding of talents. Because that is something we do know.
 
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mersk said:
That'd be a question for transfermarkt. One they have already answered, in fact. You can read their answer here, in bold: Transfer Market | RedCafe.net



What type I "feel" he is? Now that is the absurd part. If you're not aware of his financially acrobatic background, I'd be happy to provide some links for you. Besides, these were - as emphasized several times already - just examples to illustrate a point. Again I'm finding myself answering to a post that failed to answer the question my first post posed, so I'll quote myself here: Do you believe that all deals that go through are purely a matter of "supply and demand", as simple as that? No grey zones are being exploited, and no financial crimes are being committed?

EDIT: And just for the record, in case I didn't make it clear enough: I'm not saying that these examples are in any way "proof" of any white-collar criminal activity. For all I know these are perfectly legitimate transfers. But this is the whole point: "For all I know". Because we don't really know, do we? We don't know the extent of such activity, just as we don't know the extent of doping in football. And as long as we don't know, there's nothing to be done about it. And in that regard I agree completely with Subtle when it comes to limiting big clubs' hoarding of talents. Because that is something we do know.
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1. Still an extremely arbitrary way of calculating someone's value which is wholly dependent on how a few people see the game. For example, how can they possibly quantify the value of international prestige and playing flexibility? How well does a player need to perform in order to be 'consistent' in the eyes of the creator? How does the author decide which games is there is a pressure to perform and which games they aren't? Is there at rationale given for the weightage given to each of the afromentioned indicators which goes into forming this 'transfer value'?

The best estimation of any players market value is through the mechanism of the market itself. To one club, David Luiz might be worth £50m because he is one of the most stylish defenders in the world making him extremely marketable and is fantastic alongside Thiago Silva. To another club, he might only be worth £20m. It's really not as as simple as saying this club paid over this arbitrary transfer value for a player and thus, overpaid. Transfer value of a player depends on someone's individual perception

Perhaps one way we can roughly approximate whether clubs got a good deal or not is to compare the transfer fees of like-minded player. In that sense, you will find that Wolfsburg only overpaid a bit for Schurrle and De Bruyne. Certainly not enough for one to start extrapolating suggestions of white collar crime and what not

2. Again I can't say for sure whether financial crimes are being committed in football and whether grey areas are being exploited. All I can say is that it's absurd to start drawing suggestions of financial crimes from the examples you did provide. I am well aware of Ambramovich's background but again, this does not automatically mean he is gaming the system for what look like perfectly legitimate deals with clear incentive on both sides

Again limiting the amount of talent one big club can 'hoard' is a totally separate issue. Their are pros and cons to it which should be disussed but it's not really related to this whole idea of whether money is being handed under the tables and what not
 
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