In the present day, Liverpool’s stadium is smaller than those of Man Ure, Arsenal, Newcastle and Sunderland and Man City. Liverpool’s first team squad costs less than those of Man City, Chelsea, Man Ure and Tottenham and a wage bill lower than Man City, Chelsea, Man Ure and Arsenal.
Liverpool’s record signing cost less than the record signings of Man City, Chelsea and Man Ure while we haven’t broken – or come close to breaking - the British transfer record since 1995.
People, particularly Bluenoses and SKY pundits, harp on about the money we’ve spent but, as I pointed out after the Lyon game, it’s no good having four ‘expensive’ players if the rest of the squad cost a pittance.
I’ve done some analysis of Liverpool’s financial ability to compete with their English rivals since we last held the transfer record and it makes shocking reading. The table below shows Liverpool's record signings since 1995 and the players signed by other clubs for equal or greater fees before we next broke our transfer record (therefore after we paid £11m for Heskey, only players signed for £11m or more are listed).
Around 1995, there was financial parity between Liverpool, Man Ure and Arsenal with minimal differences between the three clubs' transfer records and with each breaking the record within a year.
A season later, Newcastle stunned the world by almost doubling the transfer record to land Alan Shearer for £15m.
We did not eclipse that record set in 1996 until we signed Fernando Torres in 2007.
It took us twelve full seasons before we had a player more expensive than Newcastle's record signing from 1996. By that time, Chelsea had signed 12 players for £15m or more; Man Ure had signed 6, Newcastle had bought another and Tottenham and Leeds had signed one each.
Our club record of £8.5m for Collymore was broken towards the end of the 1999-2000 season when Gerard Houllier shelled out £11m for Emile Heskey (presumably someone missed out the decimal point after the first '1'). By that time, £11m was still less than the club record signings of Newcaslte, Man Utd and Tottenham (seriously) and just a few months later, Arsenal signed Sylvain Wiltord for £13m, Chelsea bought Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink for £15m and Leeds bought Rio Ferdinand for a British record £18m. Basically, within a year of us breaking our club record, six rival clubs had bought at least one player for fees greater than our club record transfer fee.
Before we broke our transfer record again with the £14m capture of Djibril Cisse (again a decimal point must have been missed somewhere), Man Ure had broken the British transfer record three times with the signings of Ruud van Nistelrooy (£19m), Juan Sebastian Veron (£28.1m) and Rio Ferdinand (£29.1m). In addition, they had also exceeded our record £11m with the signings of Cristiano Ronaldo (£12.24m), Louis Saha (£12.82m) and Dwight Yorke (£12.6m) with the latter being signed two seasons before we bought Heskey.
In addition to Hasselbaink (£15m), Chelsea bought Fat Frank Lampard for £11m and this was before Abramovich came along with his bags of cash to permanently destroy English football. Once the Russian pitched up, Chelsea signed no fewer than six more players for fees greater than £11m: Duff (£17m), Veron (£15m), Mutu (£15.8m), Crespo (£16.8m), Makelele (£16.6m) and Ferreira (£13.2m). Interestingly, Veron, Mutu, Crespo and Makelele all left for nothing while Duff went for just £5m. Consider that the next time someone lambasts Benitez for signing Keane for £19m and selling him for £16m plus add-ons that could see the fee rise back to £19m.
Leeds had already signed Ferdinand for £18m before we landed Heskey but they subsequently signed two Robbie's (Keane and Fowler) for £12m and £11m respectively. Even Fulham (yes, Fulham) broke our transfer record when they signed Steve Martlet for £11.5m while Man City did what Houllier was too stupid to do and bought Nicolas Anelka for £13m.
Basically, until we signed Cisse, eight Premiership clubs had bought players for greater fees than our club record (Man Ure, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, Leeds, Newcastle, Fulham and Man City). It is also worth noting that when we signed Cisse for £14m, the transfer record stood at £29.1m (more than double) and in the same summer Chelsea signed Didier Drogba for £10m more (£24m) and Man Ure signed Wayne Rooney for £13m more (£27m).
Before Liverpool’s transfer fee record was broken for the next and final time to date, Chelsea had brought in six more players for fees above £14m (Drogba £24m, Carvalho £19.85m, Wright-Phillips £21m, Essien £24.4m, Shevchenko £30.8m and Ashley Cole £16m); Man Utd had added three (Rooney £27m, Carrick £18.6m and Hargreaves £17m), and Newcastle and Spurs had signed Michael Shithead (£16m) and Darren Bent (£16.5m).
Despite this, people seem to think that Rafa should have won the Premiership by now. Actually, only two teams have won the Premiership during Benitez's time at Liverpool and they are the two whose names feature most regularly in the list above.
Fuck history; money wins every time.
No comments:
Post a Comment