So who has been buying success in the Premier League?

toon_mad

toon_mad

toon_mad

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A few times I have read and seen by Man City fans defending the clubs spending, mostly whining about how Man United have bought it for so many years etc. For me I would say whatever money United have spent has likely been done by money generated from a global reputation and following and the fact they are always in the major european competitions etc. I don't understand how Chelsea and Man City fans can compare there clubs spending compared to United's, considering the fact Chelsea and Man City have bought a heck of a lot of players.

Back in the early 90's although there were some foreign players in the Premier league, a lot of them didn't want to play or come to England, after all they could play in hotter countires for more better known established teams. They really didn't care to play on our pitches in the cold weather back then.

Unfortunately from the Abromavich / Seikh Mansour era you see players coming for insane amounts of wages purely because the clubs can offer the most. Players call it going to an ambitous club, but I call it a load of nonsense. All clubs have ambitons to succeed whatever there targets or dreams, most players will say this is there reason to join a club to make the fans feel happy, but it's all a selfish act in reality.

Needless to say the figures speak for themselves, below is a league table of several current and former premier league teams. Starting from the top with the highest spending clubs to the bottom showing the least spending clubs (combined totals of bought/sold revenue):

1. Chelsea - £744,440,000
2. Manchester City - £649,180,000
3. Liverpool - £552,205,000
4. Manchester United - £483,150,000
5. Tottenham - £412,050,000
6. Newcastle United - £345,345,000
7. Arsenal - £341,090,000
8. Aston Villa - £305,190,000
9. Sunderland - £230,015,000
10. Everton - £218,245,500
11. West Ham - £195,982,000
12. Blackburn - £195,462,000
13. Middlesbrough - £193,985,000
14. Fulham - £149,781,000
15. Leeds - £147,280,000
16. Birmingham - £135,545,000
17. Portsmouth - £116,600,000
18. West Brom - £105,280,000
19. Wolves - £97,619,000
20. Bolton - £95,970,000
21. Wigan - £90,965,000
22. Stoke - £79,615,000
23. QPR - £51,547,500
24. Norwich - £31,770,000
25. Hull - £28,320,000
26. Burnley - £23,250,000
27. Swansea - £14,002,500
28. Blackpool - £7,752,500

The excitement of the premier league is not how it used to be anymore in my opinion. Teams now instead of looking to build a competitive side through academies and development etc would prefer to bring in any old foreign investment. It's no longer about the competition, it's about who has the wealthiest owners and can offer the biggest wage packages, it's only going to get worse, not just for clubs but the national team. We only have certain players in the England team now because we have no other better alternatives. How can you call a club great if they basically purchased the league, Man City and Chelsea may just aswell have gone on Ebay and bought it.

I thought this was supposed to be an English game? Yet why do we have foreign owners/ foreign managers and foriegn players playing? We are basically saying we are not good enough as an English county, we must be really **** and boring to watch. So instead we need foreigners to do the job for us.
 
Boring, who says its an English game and should have English owners, its a league PLAYED in England, nothing more or less.

Stop being ridiculous, why on earth should the best 500 players in the world(20x 25 man squads) all be English, what would be the odd's on only English players being the best, its essentially impossible. The league is better because it has better players, if it was English players only the quality, competition and entertainment would be significantly worse, to the point that very few people would want to watch it worldwide. The EPL rakes in more money than the German, Spanish, and Italian leagues, because of its entertainment value, with only English players the money from foreign TV would be non existant and the level of spending in football, from wages right down into the acadamies would be a fraction of what we have now.

With ONLY English players as an option, with only 10-15 truly brilliant English players, they would likely all gravitate to one team, leaving us with a one team league like so many of the smaller leagues.

AS for buying it, get over yourself, if Utd had to build up their squad in the past 3 years instead of the past 15, they'd have spent as much or more.

Factor in wages and transfer fee's and Utd is still many hundreds of millions ahead of everyone else.

For the past decade before City got their money they were spending somewhere between 1/4 and 1/5 of the wages Utd was, I believe City's last year before the money they were spending in the region of 40mil in wages while Utd were spending in the region of £130 ish. Utd have still outspent everyone in the league by a mile, with Chelsea and City catching up more from wages than from transfers. City have spent somewhere along the lines of £400-450mil in wages in the past few years, and even after they stop spending on transfers their wages will keep going.


THe buying the league argument means nothing, no successful team spends significantly less, in ANY sport, that has always been the case. Utd have spent heavily, just earlier when things were cheaper, City and Chelsea are doing it later on when costs are higher.
 
toon_mad said:
it's about who has the wealthiest owners and can offer the biggest wage package
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Would agree with this point.

Never again will there be another Newcastle (promoted then into title contention and playing the best football in the country in two seasons) though saying that Newcastle were not shy about spending money back in the day.

As you say wealthiest will be best which is a shame but ho hum, probably why I have taken a lot more interest in American sports over the last few years. Would love to see wage capping and spend capping with real quotas of local players put in place, though this would need to happen globally, but it will never happen because those at the top with the most power have a vested interest in keeping things as they are.

I'll watch the EPL regardless and enjoy it though!
 
I think the issue with this sort of question is that it is too large in its scope. As with anything, if you are there at the start of something, its usually a lot easier to become one of the main clubs in a league. United have not built up a large fan base or youth development system over night.

That tends to lead to a monopoly and you can see it in most countries leagues. There are a few teams that are consistently around the top. The way football works means that they then get the largest amount of money to re-invest and secure their future success.

It would have been near impossible for City or Chelsea to have competed with United over the past 7-8 years without that injection of money and you can see, Arsenal and Liverpool have fallen by the wayside somewhat and no longer put up a challenge for the title.

By all accounts, City are looking to secure the future of the club and manage it in a more sustainable manner but they also realise that to do this in an accellerated timeframe will cost a lot of money.

I don't think we can say that money ruins a club or sport, the people spending that money do. The price of players and their wages will always be increasing as long as the amount of money clubs get is increasing. Its a bit catch 22 with some clubs I imagine. They have to spend so much on wages for average players so that they can survive in their league only to find that there is no money for youth development, scouting or stadium work.

Foreign talent tends to be of a better standard for the money which is why we have so many players from abroad. That and the strength / money involved in the EPL. It has been said a billion times but the way we teach sport in this country is fundamentally wrong in most areas.

We look for players that are winners from a young age and basically, that means the kids that have gone through puberty earliest and grown the largest. Winning is the most important thing for these young english players and I have experienced first hand how they do this. I stopped playing football because some of the teams we would face would be twice our size, dirty as hell and the ref wouldn't do a thing about it.

We will never get a Messi in this country because he would have had his legs broken too many times before he got anywhere near professional level.
 
You've picked an odd set of figures there as it's just transfer spend and not net transfer spend which is clearly the more important one. i.e.

# Nett Spend 92 - 2011

1 Chelsea £515,965,000
2 Manchester City £473,627,000
3 Liverpool £226,235,000
4 Manchester United £177,310,000
5 Tottenham £168,832,500
6 Aston Villa £128,115,000
7 Sunderland £103,985,000
8 Newcastle £99,820,000
9 Fulham £91,686,000
10 Wolves £57,024,000
11 Stoke City £53,485,000
12 Everton £52,975,500
13 West Bromwich Albion £39,112,499
14 Queens Park Rangers £29,143,500
15 Arsenal £21,616,000
16 Bolton £16,300,000
17 Wigan £9,022,500
18 Swansea City £7,142,500
19 Blackburn Rovers -£3,723,000
20 Norwich City -£15,625,000

Namely it shows how ridiculously well Arsenal have done in the transfer market over the last 10 years - there is a whole Emirates stadium (390 million) difference just in transfer fees between Chelsea/City and Arsenal :p Factor in wages too and I think Chelsea have spent almost a billion pounds more than Arsenal :p
 
Firstly source on the figures? I'd love to see it show all the teams that have been in the prem (as there is only about 8 missing).

Secondly, look at where half those clubs have ended up! Portsmouth are L1 and on a melt down, Leeds have been through a lot, Southampton (who aren't on it) have been a mess of spending, the list goes on to show that spending mindlessly only sort of works (i.e. buying over rated, expensive average players doesn't work, but man city eventually does).

I don't think blaming foreigners really works as the problem in the league, its that very short term-ist attitude that FM ingrains on the world (or the Redknapp vision) that 2 or 3 big name/wage players can make a mid table side compete for champions league money every year. In effect greed and prize money drive teams into all sorts of messes.

Looking forward to being in the prem again though, full stadiums every week against some of the best players in the world will be fun (everyone can see the amazing adam lallana and rickie lambert too).

Going to lower leagues more or less puts into perspective of what you want to see more than anything else, nothings worse than a 0-0 draw between Northampton town and Accrington Stanley (mk dons away was called off) and leaving after 75 mins because neither team could string 5 passes together.
 
Cool picture alert :p

Combined-T+W-cfcafcthfc.jpg


I wish they'd do one for the top 6, serious statgasm :p

Interesting that Arsenal and Spurs have spent virtually the same amount, yet one has consistently had CL football for the last 10 years and has a brand new shiny stadium too.
 
To get the full picture wouldn't you have to 'scale' the spending in some way?

The title could be 'bought' for much, much less 15 years ago. So just looking at total spent, doesn't really give the full picture, as the money spent in recent years will dwarf everything else.
 
lol liverpool, such mugs in the transfer market, pay dumb prices, usually sell for dumb prices. Not a league title and third highest net spend according to those figures, embaressing.
 
The table in the OP makes no sense, the cost of good players has gone up and up so obviously, teams trying to move up the table more recently (e.g. chelsea/city) will obviously have spent the most.

There is a huge barrier to entry to breaking into the champions league consistently - simply because teams in it get (a lot) more money, so can afford to stay in it. This is only going to get worse with the new cl tv deal next year (approx £80mil for winning it :eek:).

With the money involved in the champions league, the idea that teams could break into the cl regularly without a rich owner is becoming more and more of a fantasy.
 
Rich_L said:
Cool picture alert :p

Combined-T+W-cfcafcthfc.jpg


I wish they'd do one for the top 6, serious statgasm :p

Interesting that Arsenal and Spurs have spent virtually the same amount, yet one has consistently had CL football for the last 10 years and has a brand new shiny stadium too.
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It says Arsenal have spent around, what 550 ish mil in the past decade, yet we spent over £100mil a year in wages for the past 3 years alone, we're closish to 400mil in the past 3 years, and the three years before that won't be far off 300mil. Think those numbers are a little on the low side for Arsenal and Spurs.

However yes, Chelsea spending vs Arsenal/Spurs since they got their money is going to be a huge divide. The past five or so seasons Spurs spent something ridiculous on transfers while Arsenal spent next to nothing, however we were outspending Spurs by 40-50mil a season during most of that time as well, both teams have spent a very similar amount in the past 4-5 years, just Arsenal on wages and Spurs a mix of wages and transfers.

The thing is, Chelsea/Utd/City is the spending to compare because Arsenal have barely been title contenders since 2004. The interesting comparison would be wages and transfers from start of the prem league till now. You'll find City/Chelsea/Utd way out ahead but I wouldn't be surprised to find those three in a fairly close bracket well out ahead of everyone else.

Arsenal were being relatively competitive with Utd during a period we both spent a decent amount and before Utd started pushing the really big wages. I'm not sure how much Utd outspent Arsenal from what 97-2003 or so, Utd only started throwing 20-30mil at players from Ferdy onwards, in 2002.

So its not surprising that Arsenal could be competitive up until Utd started spending 30mil a pop on players on top of a few 5-20mil players, that's also when their wages started to exceed 100k a week regularly, something Arsenal don't do, and when Arsenal stopped being a consistent contender for the top of the league(okay with a year or so lag).
 
Yeah I thought about doing it for all teams in the last decade as you can use the wage spend from the historical Deloitte reports combined with the net transfer spend from transferleague, I just can't be bothered to do it :p
 
Rich_L said:
You've picked an odd set of figures there as it's just transfer spend and not net transfer spend which is clearly the more important one. i.e.

# Nett Spend 92 - 2011

1 Chelsea £515,965,000
2 Manchester City £473,627,000
3 Liverpool £226,235,000
4 Manchester United £177,310,000
5 Tottenham £168,832,500
6 Aston Villa £128,115,000
7 Sunderland £103,985,000
8 Newcastle £99,820,000
9 Fulham £91,686,000
10 Wolves £57,024,000
11 Stoke City £53,485,000
12 Everton £52,975,500
13 West Bromwich Albion £39,112,499
14 Queens Park Rangers £29,143,500
15 Arsenal £21,616,000
16 Bolton £16,300,000
17 Wigan £9,022,500
18 Swansea City £7,142,500
19 Blackburn Rovers -£3,723,000
20 Norwich City -£15,625,000

Namely it shows how ridiculously well Arsenal have done in the transfer market over the last 10 years - there is a whole Emirates stadium (390 million) difference just in transfer fees between Chelsea/City and Arsenal :p Factor in wages too and I think Chelsea have spent almost a billion pounds more than Arsenal :p
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That just goes to show that in the prem outside of the top 6 money certainly doesn't buy succes. Lol at how much the wolves have spent compared to their major premier league failings
 
Basically apart from arsenal everyone that has had success has bought it.

Is that what you wanted to show?
 
toon_mad said:
For me I would say whatever money United have spent has likely been done by money generated from a global reputation and following and the fact they are always in the major european competitions etc.
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No other team in the league can compete with United's worldwide fan base which has been built up over many decades, so without rich owners they will simply not be able to compete with them financially, this was more or less the case pre-Abramovich (bar Arsenal under Wenger) and it showed by United winning the league virtually every year.

Chelsea and Man City have spent huge amounts in a very short space of time and at a time when player prices are astronomical but they are also laying the foundations for themselves to become more self sufficient by improving their own worldwide fan base and income streams.

I think a lot of Man United fans are just bitter because they are no longer the wealthiest or most attractive club to play for in the EPL, when it comes to signing players they are not used to having to feed off of scraps like the rest of the league had to during Man United's dominant years.

If anything that table shows with Liverpool that money by itself doesn't win titles. Arsenal on the other hand have to this day done an amazing job.
 
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Run down then,

(im a Liverpool fan by the way)

Chelsea - Massive money base with an excellent under the radar manager
Arsenal - Young quality starting to show through. Spend little live a lot!
Liverpool- In decisive manager and down right stupid signings.
Man City- Hate to say it, you bought the league. If you disagree, please argue how you would have won it without the cash.
Man Utd- Simply the best management ever. I hate to say it but he has the best setup in the world.
Tottenham/Newcastle - Just goes to show what an amazing manager can do.
Everton- Who cares haha
 
JDeeLFC said:
Run down then,
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No, not really.

Proper run down:

Chelsea - bought the league
Arsenal - brilliant
Liverpool- rubbish
Man City- bought the league
Man Utd- bought the league
Tottenham/Newcastle/Everton - not competing
 
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