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
You make some good points, though I wouldn't go as far as calling it arbitrary. There is obviously a lot of work put into this, and there's no doubt they aim for objectivity. Whether they achieve it or not, is up to the subject to determine. I'm not married to these figures, but I'm not aware of any other value settings, other than of course what is actually paid for players. Even those numbers aren't always correctly reported in media, as pointed out in the post above - although I'm not convinced English papers simply change the € to a £ without even bothering to do elementary school math.
But sure, clubs overpay all the time. Andy Carroll anyone? I'm sure there's a lot of incompetence in the various board rooms, at least it often seems like it. But at the same time, I still feel it would be naive to assume there's nothing fishy ever going on. Speculative? Sure. Crazy? Far from it.
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
Of course, I can't say for sure either. No one can, at least not anyone willing/able to make it public. It could very well be that Abramovich is a sheep in wolf's clothing, but it's not something I'd wager on. And again, I'm not just talking about Abramovich here, I'm talking about all the big clubs out there spending hundreds of millions of pounds through the years. Though I should point out, I'm not saying all the big clubs are run by evil villains grinning their teeth, rubbing their hands and starting every laugh with the letter m. I'm just saying that of all those big clubs, I simply assume that some of them have something to hide.
To be honest I'm actually quite surprised by the feedback so far, I had expected something along the line of "of course there's fishy stuff going on, it's a gigantic industry so it's only natural to assume so". But it seems I'm rather alone in that regard.
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