English Premier League football club Chelsea shelled out an unprecedented amount of money during the January transfer window. The club paid more than 320 million euros for player transfers.
London’s Chelsea broke transfer records. That’s more than any British club has ever spent in a single transfer window. Chelsea also spent more money than all the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1 clubs combined (€255 million).
– The situation at Chelsea is quite acute, when the league position should be improved. Quick acquisitions, for which there are certainly – or at least hopefully – longer-term plans. Some players are thought of as future bearers, Urheilu’s expert Antti Pohja evaluate.
The London club is currently tenth in the Premier League. Pohja believes that the Champions League is an important goal for Chelsea.
The four best teams advance to the group stage of next season’s Champions League, so the place is a matter of hard work. Chelsea is already ten points behind fourth-placed Manchester United.
– In that sense, some of the acquisitions were large sums. The selling clubs knew Chelsea’s situation and knew how to price their players accordingly.
In this season’s Champions League, Chelsea has made it to the top 16 playoffs and will face Borussia Dortmund in the quarterfinals. However, Chelsea will suffer headache from new purchases (you switch to another service)as it can only register three new players for the playoffs.
Chelsea also made the most expensive player signing in Premier League history when Enzo Fernandez transferred from the Portuguese Benfica for a compensation of 121 million euros. Fernandez shone in Argentina’s World Cup gold-winning team at last year’s Games. The 22-year-old midfielder was also awarded as the best young player of the games.
Spending is insane in the Premier League
Consulting company Deloitte says (you switch to another service), that Premier League clubs spent almost double the amount of money compared to the previous January record. In January 2018, transfer compensation was paid for more than 480 million euros, but now the amount has risen to more than 920 million euros.
Premier League clubs spent an incredible 3.14 billion euros on player transfers, when summer and winter transfer window acquisitions are added together. This is also a new record, when an effortless 2.15 billion euros were spent in the 2017–18 season.
Does this amount of transfer compensation make any sense anymore? Expert Pohja states that it probably isn’t.
– Money itself, or the management of finances, has lost its meaning a long time ago. Maybe the biggest clubs just slap a price tag on the players in relation to other players. The biggest owners have an almost bottomless coffers. This is not healthy.
Along with Chelsea’s thrashing, Arsenal, Liverpool and Newcastle made big player acquisitions in the Premier League in January. They joined Tottenham on loan Pedro Porro and Arnaut Danjuma.
Aston Villa (€30.1 million in total), Bournemouth (€55.4 million), Leeds (€40 million) and Southampton (€63.2 million) made big player purchases from smaller clubs in January.
In addition to these, the promotion Nottingham Forest continued player transactions, when Danilo, Felipe, Gustavo Scarpa and Jonjo Shelvy moved to the company. In addition, they came on loan Keylor Navas and Chris Wood. During the current season, Nottingham has acquired 28 new players, of which only five are loans.
Outside of England, player transfers were smaller, but new interesting names were also obtained in other major European leagues. One transfer bomb was the Portuguese who played in Manchester City Joao Cancelon loan transfer to Bayern Munich. The French club Marseille bought the Portuguese youth, 22 years old Shit With a transfer fee of 32 million euros from Braga.
Spanish Atletico Madrid bought the Dutchman Memphis Depay for three million euros from Barcelona. Also benched at Tottenham Matt Doherty left on a free transfer to Atletico.
“Fair game” is left out
In 2010, the European football association Uefa introduced the rules of financial fair play (Financial fair play, FFP). They were meant to limit the supremacy and excessive spending of wealthy clubs, but now fair play is left out.
It is planned to enter into force next summer new code set (you switch to another service): Financial Sustainability and Club Licensing Regulations (FSCLR).
According to Antti Pohja, competition becomes more and more boring if championships can be won with money. The amounts are already growing so large that the majority do not have the opportunity to compete for the best players, he states.
– Transfer amounts are getting further and further away as new star players arrive. Transfer compensations will not decrease unless they can be curbed by changes in the rules. It has not yet been seen that the biggest owners run out of money.
Source: Transfermarkt.com
Sources: The Athletic, BBC, Deloitte, Sky Sports, transfermarkt.com, Uefa, Evening Standard.