How much is the Arsenal team worth, and an asterisk for the Mancs
That question in the headline above is one of those that it can be worth thinking about for a while before jumping in with an answer, as a few of us discovered when we have previously tried to kick the idea around.
In the end we came up with all sorts of ideas and couldn’t agree on which clubs have the best squads. Indeed even some prices were disputed…
So we went for a maximum valuation for the players in the team, the valuation being the amount they cost the club to buy. So a player who came up through the youth team would have a value of £0. And the total valuation of the team might be £250m.
The point of this is that the player carries his valuation throughout his time at the club. Then when the club want to sell him, at his next club he would carry the new valuation. And maybe each club could only be allowed to have eleven players on the pitch at any one time who had a current valuation of £500 million or less. I personally quite liked that as a way of stopping clubs like ManC just buying and buying.
Apart from balancing clubs a bit more, it might also reduce the crazy amount of money that clubs spend on players, especially if the value of a player for the purposes of this rule would be the amount the club actually paid for him in the contract of sale. Both the buying and selling club would have to sign to say this was the actual cost of the sale and would have to produce evidence to support this assertion.
Actually it was interesting that when we came up with this idea, none of us was sure who the most valuable player was in the squad at the moment – according to TransferMarkt we have three players valued at over €100.00m – Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka and William Saliba.
But we also thought that players that came up through the youth ranks should keep a value of zero – assuming they were on the club’s books at the age of 16. So that would encourage clubs to invest in young players – like Saka indeed. And like Max Dowman, currently valued at €30.00m on TransferMarkt which given his age seemed rather low. But given the way some centre backs play, he could be seriously injured any time soon and never play again, so yes, maybe that is fair.
Arsenal currently have 24 players registered according to TransferMarkt, but two of these are under 21 so don’t count in the total 25 that is allowable. So Arsenal could, if injuries or other disasters hit, sign three more players in the next window without having to sell anyone. The total value of the 24 players currently listed as first teamers is 1238 million euros.
By way of contrast Manchester City have 25 players aged 21 upwards, with a value of 1464 million euros. Tottenham have 27 players in their squad, but two of them are clearly under 21 so that’s ok. Their value is 827m euros according to TransferMarkt.
Thus just looking at these three clubs, ManC clearly have the most valuable squad, a little head of Arsenal. All three clubs are, of course, within the boundaries for the number of “adult” players as set by the rule book of the League.
What I found, in doing this little exercise using the figures from one unified source (on the basis that if it does make mistakes, they are most likely to be replicated across all three clubs – although I saw no evidence of mistakes) is that the difference between the value of the players in total is not as much as I expected. Indeed all the various figures available suggest to me that ManC have indeed taken heed of the anger among other clubs over what they are doing financially, and they are reigning themselves in.
As we have noted, no other clubs want Manc punished so strongly that they stop paying the debts they have to other clubs and so we are moving toward a conclusion of their case in which nothing is done in return for an agreement that they will stick by the rules from now on, and do pay all their debts to other clubs on time.
Anyone adding up the number of trophies ManC have gained can put an asterisk * alongside the total with a note saying “including eight titles disputed due to financial irregularities”, which will remind us all of what went on. ManC can say forever more than there was nothing wrong, and the rest of the league can note that there was.
Nice thought but unfortunately:
No club is going to respect any new financial rules while ManC115 is making a mockery of the premier league rule book and remain unpunished.
As you have said in past reports, if they introduce any new financial rules that ManC115 don’t agree too or will end up breaking, what will the premier officials do?
For fear of court action, the answer is nothing, because they are all skittish, for the want of a better word. In everybody’s opinion!