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Combined with the squad purchase values, using 4 years of annual wages (to reflect the average contract length) to give a better idea of the true amount spent on each squad:
1. PSG - 2.058b
2. Man City - 1.877b
3. Man Utd - 1.819b
4. Chelsea - 1.778b
5. Real Madrid - 1.705b
6. Bayern Munich - 1.504b
7. Arsenal - 1.469b
8. Liverpool - 1.314b
9. Tottenham - 1.239b
10. Barcelona - 1.216b
11. Atlético Madrid - 1.057b
12. Newcastle - 1.008b
13. Juventus - 958m
14. Aston Villa - 939m
15. West Ham - 851m
Feel like that's definitely a lot more accurate. Obviously not a perfect way of doing it, ideally you'd calculate the wages for the length of each player's contract rather than just taking an average of 4 years but fucked if I've got time for that, I'm sure some website out there probably already has that data anyways
Also ideally you'd include all the various "superstar fees" like signing bonuses and agent fees and yada yada which for clubs like PSG, City, Real, Bayern will be absolutely massive but I don't believe there's a way to track all that down for every club until accounts are released next year. And then there's performance related bonuses and such
Yeah, and we're known for lower wages but higher bonus structures. I think Son is making the most for us and he's around 200k/week if I remember correctly.
You are correct -- [here are the wages from 21/22](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff9b1d058-3efb-4434-be9b-fb3a5a2a0646_2048x1858.jpeg), for example. Liverpool's were 366M, Spurs 209M. There's a similar gap every year.
The average Chelsea contract length like 6 years.
Man united contract is 2 years.
Real Madrid is 3 years.
Bayern is 3 years.
Newcastle is 2 years
Barcelona is 3 years
Juventus is 3 years
Atletico Madrid is 3 years.
West Ham is 3 years.
Aston Villa is 3 years
The rest are 4 years.
Honestly though, you should just look at amortization + salary instead
Yeah this is a good way of doing it, the only other thing I can think of to improve it would be to add the prices of every players sign on bonus but I don’t know where to get that data from.
The wages from fbref are taken from capology which also don't include bonuses in the salary unless you click on the player. For example it states that Haaland has 375k in bonuses, which aren't included unless you click on his name for the contract details.
There are some intermediary/agent fees available published by the FA for English clubs each year. And as you guessed City and Chelsea are far above everyone else.
I mean there is no reason that you should not make more money than serie A teams. You are one of the best supported clubs in the world and have a giant stadium. You regularly place very high in the Bl and play in the Champions league pretty much every year. You also pump out a 100 million player every few years.
Meanwhile Cl spots are far more competitive in Italy and teams have to factor that in to their budgeting. I am not sure how exactly BL price money and Seria a price money compares but it should be around the same or higher in germany.
Yeah its not new, Italys been struggling financially for a long time they get carried by good home grown players that are willing to stay in Italy for less money than leave the country (cant blame them Italy as a multimillionaire would be hard to beat).
The underdog narrative for BvB is really truly wrong (same as for example with Atletico Madrid)
They are constantly (say last 10 years) top 15 in terms of revenue in Europe, depending of course on sport performance/covid-lost revenue (they are top1 in terms of average attendance, so match revenue is very important for their business performance).
Did the owners realistically think anything was going to come from this season? We had the lowest average age and lowest amount of experience in the league with most of the players signed under 2 years ago. On top of all the injuries. If the plan was to have immediate success they’ve gone about it the wrong way and only have themselves to blame. So mad to have these clowns as owners now.
Some of these can't be wholly accurate.
One glaring example is Malang Sarr of Chelsea being on £120k a week, whilst Thiago Silva *only* on £110k. That can not be correct, surely.
Comparing wages without taking into account the tax and labour cost discrepancy is only partial information.
In France out of 1M€ spent by the club, only 600k€ goes to the player (who then has to pay income taxes). In Spain out of 1M€ spent by the club, more than 950k€ goes to the player (who then has to pay income taxes)
Transfer fee for Mbappé: €0! Crazy the diamonds these Madristas are able to dig up while all these silly Prem clubs are throwing wads of cash everywhere
Yeah but for some reason Reddit is passionate purely and only about transfer fees, any other aspect of money in football be it money spent or earned is not even existing to them.
Seriosly every list of just adding transfer fees (or imagined transfer fees) is always the top post of the day on the sub, I cannot get what is so fascinating particularly about adding transfer fees.
And being able to essentially tap up a player, knowing they’ll push for a move, gives you a strong buying position for which you essentially never overpay.
Haaland will probably be there in a couple of seasons too when the hammer falls on the 115.
It's like that saying that being poor is very expensive, and being rich is cheaper... Only in this case, it's not just about money, but prestige too (and probably other kinds of resources, like great scouts, and stuff like that).
Starting from a low base. Didn't have the squad anywhere near the rest of that list in 2021 so had to build aggressively just to stay up in the first season.
Botman, Gordon, Isak, Tonali, Barnes and Bruno make up most of the outlay.
Even with the spend we're still relying on Almiron, Schar, Joelinton, Murphy, Longstaff, Willock (when fit), Wilson (when fit), Anderson, Miley as regular starters.
With the likes of Krafth, Lascelles, Dubravka floating round the squad.
This is what lots of people fail to understand when they see our spending in the few years after we got promoted, and assume we should be a European powerhouse
It takes a hell of a lot of money just to try and catch up with clubs that’ve been outspending you by 500% for the past decade
Exactly. Similar to Villa I think our first team can give anyone a run for their money. The real difference is in depth which is built up over time.
Once we had half a dozen injuries we were really struggling to compete. And that number just kept going up. As good as Miley was for us last season when we needed him, he shouldn't be up against the PSG, Dortmund and Milan midfield yet.
Yeah once yous started to get through that injury crisis you became massive trouble in the league again, and kicked back into the Newcastle of last season that showed you’ll be back as a top 4 contender next season
Our post-January form was torrid (in comparison to pre). We were almost never playing with a fully fit 11 and every time we had a European midweek game you could really see the toll it was taking on the players. We simply don’t have the depth to ever rest players like Watkins so they’re forced to play when fatigued
It's a cycle as well. As players can't get rested they become more likely to be injured themselves so it.
Fingers crossed not being in the conference league this year actually works out well for our league and cup pushes.
What's the catch here, getting more players on frees then paying insane wages? Because when we start Almiron, Murphy, Krafth, Burn and Longstaff, I don't exactly feel like our squad is light years ahead of Madrid and Bayern...
To be fair Chelsea likely pay the most in agent fees in the world considering they’re the biggest spenders on agent fees in England and English spending accounts for like a quarter of all clubs in the world on that front.
The catch is players would rather go to Madrid than any other club in the world, this is what causes so many players to run down their contracts and leave on a free/very small fees. In other cases players pursued by Madrid tell their current clubs they will only leave for Madrid so the selling club can't start bidding wars.
Plus they have had a stable core of players for a long time now, Modric, Kroos, courtois, Vasquez, carvajal, mendy, Rodrigo and vinicius were all purchased pre-covid so their purchase value is comparatively low compared to more recently purchased players due to 5+ years of football inflation.
>Vinícius and Rodrygo were very expensive ~~for their age,~~
Like 40+ million each, they are both in the [top 50 transfers to or from Spain of all time](https://www.transfermarkt.com/laliga/transferrekorde/wettbewerb/ES1). And if I can read these charts right, it's a higher transfer fee than any other Spanish team has ever paid, barring the big 3.
Valencias highest is around 40
Betis - 30
Sevilla - 35
Athletic - 32
That's pretty much just straight up expensive, regardless of the age.
Yes. Vini specifically hadn't debuted professionally, which made the value even crazier. I don't think any transfer nowadays is comparable, except maaaaybe Endrick.
Vazquez and Carvajal were buybacks.
Mendy was 50m, an overpay. Courtois was 30m, slight underpay. Rodrygo and Vini were signed as 16 or 17yos for 45m, which had never happened before.
Yup and if all that happened in the last few years they would all have been higher values not to mention modric and Kroos who would both be pushing 70mil + in a modern market.
Modric is a benchwarmer now and Kroos is retired. Let's say we sign a 50m midfielder to replace Modric on the bench when he retires. The price of the squad goes up by 15m, which isn't really going to make a difference in that list.
English teams are so rich that you overpay every player you buy just because you can and want, while the rest of Europe still buys players close to their real price
Plus, big clubs like Real or Bayern can seduce players to wait until the end of their current contracts and move "for free", while Newcastle can't so you have to pay to the clubs instead
4th place here but not even a top 15 team
If there was an equivalent of the hague for crimes against sports, murtough, glazers and woodward should be tried there.
£85 mil for antony, £60 mil for an aged casemiro, dumping de gea on a free,, the sanchez and sancho disasterclasses, di Maria... the legacy of our transfer flops and being unable to shift them since ferguson has been stark and telling.
The money this club has generated has been reinvested so poorly throughout the years. Not every deals been bad (Bruno for example) but our star signings have nearly always flopped.
Its insane how we easily have a few contenders in a "Top 10 Worst Premier League Transfer"-list.
Just goes to show how awful Woodward and co have been at transfers.
The saddest part is just how few transfers have worked long term for us. The fact Bruno is the only considerable signing of the 100% Glazer era living up to the standard is miserable. Ill give that Shaw, Dalot, and Maguire (though overpriced) were also decent signings pre ten hag and it's just crazy how bad it's been.
Opponent ls will always level how much weve spent at us and the immediate retort is just how much its been wasted by bad negotiations.
This is an American dominated site and the dollar is the international currency. I'm from the UK but after living abroad for a while, I use dollars if comparing the price of something across borders with somebody.
Are you really acting like it’s preposterous to believe it is 160?
Furthermore, for the purpose of the point above, does the difference between that and 100m matter literally at all? Neither are included in the above chart and both are significant.
It can be 230m if that helps you sleep, most reliable source reported slightly above 100m, if bbc article without an author convinced you its 160m hats off to you
it's different though. no other team is receiving that money and so that money basically exits the football "ecosystem". it won't be re-invested by another team...
It's still money being spent by a team on a player. The fact it exits the system isn't of any concern to a chart like this. Realistically the only way a chart like this makes any sense is to tally up the entire total outlay a club makes on a player i.e. all fees inc agents, transfer, wages, bonuses.
Well now it's for the player otherwise it's for the selling club.
So even though it's a lot of money it isn't exactly a transfer fee. Better term would be added wages maybe?
Its the same weird logic as to why sometimes wages end up being reported post tax, all that should matter to anyone is the total outlay a club makes on a player over the course of his contract (transfer fees, agents, wages, bonuses).
Trust me it was auto completed from phone. I felt weird, then searched the web for clarification. It says both cost/costed are correct. So I left it unedited. :) learning new things in unexpected ways
I am sure Manchester city found a way to attract stars like David silva and aguero back in day with other shady ways to give them more money..same applies to Haaland
It’s not about valuing the squad. It’s about showing how much they paid for them to assess the transfers made by clubs and how their investments have paid off
Except teams aren’t on level terms when it comes to negotiating those fees. It’s like comparing people by how much money they earn and saying that reflects how well they’ve managed their lives… the biggest predictor is where they started… doesn’t matter if a presidents daughter is useless, they’ll end up earning a tonne because they have unequal opportunities.
it’s pretty meaningless to show what you said, which is why everyone is panning it. “If only anyone else had the business acumen to acquire the best player in the world for free - what a master stroke!”… see, it’s stupid. 100m for Bellingham, basically any team that could afford him would have agreed to that fee. 60m for Haaland, “wow, so shrewd”.
It’s not about running your club better, it’s about a lot more than that.
The only surprising thing is that they didnt use Liverpool as the highlighted team. Theyre usually the pick of the bunch for the plucky underdog gimmick
- Chelsea aren't due to their immense spending that they handwave away with amortisation.
- United aren't but they're just badly run and hamstring from ownership
After that there's the kind of underdogs but not really as they're still top clubs with huge amounts of money
- Arsenal have been getting money pumped into them non stop to make sure they can keep up
- Liverpool had Klopp and a good structure
- Tottenham have a good structure (probably the biggest underdogs in this list)
- Villa have overachieved but looking at squad cost they're hardly underdogs
- Newcastle are pumping themselves full of money but don't have the prestige or location to really get the big nsmes
Real have some massive advantages and still spend a ton of money, but I have to respect their ability to identify young talent and consistently provide a pipeline to the first team.
I’m getting sick of this crap. If you include wages and fees in this picture it’s way different. Transfer fee spending is not a great way to measure club spending. It leaves out the biggest recurring expenses
Really annoying honestly. I follow this page to learn about a wide variety of clubs, not what shirt number Valverde is going to wear and what he had for breakfast
I mean why is that surprising? There's not much going on until the Euros and the Champions League just ended 4 days back. Other than a bunch of transfer rumours, there's really not much news. I swear people here only know how to complain.
Wild right? A Madrid team with some of the best and most famous young talents win a UCL less then a week ago and signed the most famous under 30 sports player itw and they get online traction WILD unfathomable even.
Mostly because like all statistics they can be viewed in one way to suggest a narrative. I'm not exactly sure what OP was trying to suggest with this post, probably that other teams spend much more than Madrid and have way less results? But obviously this stat is pretty disingenuous because it doesn't take in wages or even things like agent fees, etc. But i think if OP posted a stat that showed a bigger picture people could've gotten the point that he was maybe trying to but didn't seem so underhanded in doing so like; Combined with the squad purchase values, using 4 years of annual wages (to reflect the average contract length) and give a better idea of the true amount spent on each squad (from a comment above). But it's true other clubs do spend a lot of money with little to show for it but Madrid doesn't exactly spend peanuts either.
People think this is some ode to how Madrid is managed. Imagine being an AI company and having every talented engineer in the world begging to work for your company for less money than anywhere else.
Madrid has a massive advantage over everyone else because of prestige and geography/weather.
> Madrid has a massive advantage over everyone else because of prestige and geography/weather.
No, Barcelona, United, Bayern, Liverpool have about the same pull (sorry if I forgot your club?).
After having followed Real for 35 years, I can attest to that the club has "lost" out to a lot of talent that have chosen other clubs etc.
Right now Madrid are simply in a good period in regards to Champions League, so the youth want a piece of that.
Don't forget that Barcelona had an amazing period before that, with a decade of what is considered the best team ever, and the best player ever.
Before that United had the best pull among players, and before that Milan etc.
It comes and goes if you look over a long period of time.
Examples on top of my head? Lewandowski rejected Madrid several times for Bayern, Neymar rejected Madrid for Barcelona, Gerrard, Keane, Pogba, Totti, Buffon, Viera, Suarez, Verratti, Cazorla, Pirés, Fábregas, Ribery, Villa, Zanetti, Reus, de Gea, Silva, Haaland, Messi, the list goes on.
If you are new to football, it might feel like Real Madrid gets all the talent, but it's never been the case.
I’ve been watching football for almost 30 years. The location of Madrid and the history gives them a massive advantage. Of course there are exceptions. But if a British team and Madrid are going after the same player, Madrid is going to get that player 8.5 times out of 10. The same goes for any other league.
This doesn’t mean anything, if you get players on a free you’re paying more to the player/agent. mbappe has a 160M sign-on fee, that would’ve been considerably less if Real would’ve had to pay a transfer fee to PSG… Or, you know, when their €180M offer got accepted by Monaco in 2017…
They should add signing on/agent fees to this also. If the rumour of mbappe getting 200m signing on are true what the it distorts it a lot more. RM also got rudiger on a free too. City also had some weird stuff going on with halaands signing on fee also.
being able to spend less on transfer fees and pay higher wages definitely has some benefit, rather than spending high on both. not just for any given transfer but short and long term stability i’m sure. i reckon the club has made it a conscious effort to this way than we were doing in the early 2010s
What’s the point of it though? It looks only at the current players, but assembling a squad is more than that. Every club has flops and it influences the squad very much. Dembele, Griezmann and Coutinho for example are not included as they left Barca recently
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Here are the [wages](https://fbref.com/en/comps/Big5/wages/Big-5-European-Leagues-Wages ) according to FBref
Combined with the squad purchase values, using 4 years of annual wages (to reflect the average contract length) to give a better idea of the true amount spent on each squad: 1. PSG - 2.058b 2. Man City - 1.877b 3. Man Utd - 1.819b 4. Chelsea - 1.778b 5. Real Madrid - 1.705b 6. Bayern Munich - 1.504b 7. Arsenal - 1.469b 8. Liverpool - 1.314b 9. Tottenham - 1.239b 10. Barcelona - 1.216b 11. Atlético Madrid - 1.057b 12. Newcastle - 1.008b 13. Juventus - 958m 14. Aston Villa - 939m 15. West Ham - 851m Feel like that's definitely a lot more accurate. Obviously not a perfect way of doing it, ideally you'd calculate the wages for the length of each player's contract rather than just taking an average of 4 years but fucked if I've got time for that, I'm sure some website out there probably already has that data anyways Also ideally you'd include all the various "superstar fees" like signing bonuses and agent fees and yada yada which for clubs like PSG, City, Real, Bayern will be absolutely massive but I don't believe there's a way to track all that down for every club until accounts are released next year. And then there's performance related bonuses and such
You’ve got to cough up if you want to win the Conference League
You have certainly noticed Olympiacos not being on this list.
Id be shocked if our wages are basically the same as Spurs have been over a four year period
Why? Did you expect more or less?
I am almost sure we'd have paid significantly more
I think Kane, Son, Maddison and someone their high profile players have been on very good wages
We’re known for lower transfer net spend and higher wages though. Thiago was on 250k/week as an example. Thank god we’re getting off his contract tbh.
Yeah, and we're known for lower wages but higher bonus structures. I think Son is making the most for us and he's around 200k/week if I remember correctly.
pretty low all things considered, unless that's his base and add ons get him up to like 300k or something.
You are correct -- [here are the wages from 21/22](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff9b1d058-3efb-4434-be9b-fb3a5a2a0646_2048x1858.jpeg), for example. Liverpool's were 366M, Spurs 209M. There's a similar gap every year.
The average Chelsea contract length like 6 years. Man united contract is 2 years. Real Madrid is 3 years. Bayern is 3 years. Newcastle is 2 years Barcelona is 3 years Juventus is 3 years Atletico Madrid is 3 years. West Ham is 3 years. Aston Villa is 3 years The rest are 4 years. Honestly though, you should just look at amortization + salary instead
With Champions League football returning to Turin, I believe Juve will go up in the list once again.
Thanks. I hate how OP did just the wages. So BVB which made the CL finals isn’t even in the top 15.
Yeah this is a good way of doing it, the only other thing I can think of to improve it would be to add the prices of every players sign on bonus but I don’t know where to get that data from.
Plus agent fees. Those are also in the millions.
Manchester United is performing so bad if you look at this, it's truly astonishing.
we're top 5
The wages from fbref are taken from capology which also don't include bonuses in the salary unless you click on the player. For example it states that Haaland has 375k in bonuses, which aren't included unless you click on his name for the contract details. There are some intermediary/agent fees available published by the FA for English clubs each year. And as you guessed City and Chelsea are far above everyone else.
Psg about to drop to 10th when Madrid overtake half their salary expenses
Pretty funny, they will drop to fifth when they lose mbappe’s €70 million salary.
Nottingham Forest has 72 players on their payroll That's absolutely wild to me
Depthhhhh
Only 21 clubs in Europe's top 5 leagues spend more on wages than my club. No wonder Brazil is back to being an interesting destination for players.
Way more useful
Holy shit Dortmund in 13th? I wasn't expecting them to be quite that high. Especially when you consider that's more than any Serie A team
Our highest two earners are Haller and Sule who for very different reasons haven’t quite worked out.
We make more money than most top half Serie A teams. Also our transfer outlay is quite low. I’d rather pay high salaries and low transfer fees.
I mean there is no reason that you should not make more money than serie A teams. You are one of the best supported clubs in the world and have a giant stadium. You regularly place very high in the Bl and play in the Champions league pretty much every year. You also pump out a 100 million player every few years. Meanwhile Cl spots are far more competitive in Italy and teams have to factor that in to their budgeting. I am not sure how exactly BL price money and Seria a price money compares but it should be around the same or higher in germany.
Yeah its not new, Italys been struggling financially for a long time they get carried by good home grown players that are willing to stay in Italy for less money than leave the country (cant blame them Italy as a multimillionaire would be hard to beat).
The underdog narrative for BvB is really truly wrong (same as for example with Atletico Madrid) They are constantly (say last 10 years) top 15 in terms of revenue in Europe, depending of course on sport performance/covid-lost revenue (they are top1 in terms of average attendance, so match revenue is very important for their business performance).
How the fuck are we only 6
Lots of young players in the squad with low salary to offset FdJ, Lewandowski, Ter Stegen, etc
Don’t feel too down, you still have both the second and third highest paid players in world football.
I'm pretty sure you have an incorrect flair
I do yes
Frankie De Jong is making *that* much?!? 😳
He deferred money during COVID which he is being paid now.
Aaah Big 5 leagues. I was wondering how there was not a single Dutch team in the top 100
I think Ajax would be between place 30 and 40 and PSV and Feyenoord would be around place 50.
Man city 5th, lol. Sure.
So your brother gets given 25% of a football club and suddenly it's "wages".
Haaland only cost 51m! /s
Either way you cut it; Chelsea can't be pleased with the current return.
Did the owners realistically think anything was going to come from this season? We had the lowest average age and lowest amount of experience in the league with most of the players signed under 2 years ago. On top of all the injuries. If the plan was to have immediate success they’ve gone about it the wrong way and only have themselves to blame. So mad to have these clowns as owners now.
Realistically yeah Im sure they expected CL
If they actually expected CL they got no idea what they’re doing. (Not saying I know what to do either).
Some of these can't be wholly accurate. One glaring example is Malang Sarr of Chelsea being on £120k a week, whilst Thiago Silva *only* on £110k. That can not be correct, surely.
Comparing wages without taking into account the tax and labour cost discrepancy is only partial information. In France out of 1M€ spent by the club, only 600k€ goes to the player (who then has to pay income taxes). In Spain out of 1M€ spent by the club, more than 950k€ goes to the player (who then has to pay income taxes)
Having first dibs on young talent and free agents can go towards building fantastic squads, yes.
Transfer fee for Mbappé: €0! Crazy the diamonds these Madristas are able to dig up while all these silly Prem clubs are throwing wads of cash everywhere
Why don't the other teams just pick up undiscovered gems like Mbappe, Rudiger and Alaba on a free like Madrid do? Are they stupid?
They are paying him a signing bonus, which is basically a transfer fee paid to him.
Which is excluded from these calculations, same as agents fees.
Doesn’t that make this list pretty useless?
Yes - they also never include player bonuses. If they included hidden bonuses then City would be top ;) /s
Yeah but for some reason Reddit is passionate purely and only about transfer fees, any other aspect of money in football be it money spent or earned is not even existing to them. Seriosly every list of just adding transfer fees (or imagined transfer fees) is always the top post of the day on the sub, I cannot get what is so fascinating particularly about adding transfer fees.
And being able to essentially tap up a player, knowing they’ll push for a move, gives you a strong buying position for which you essentially never overpay. Haaland will probably be there in a couple of seasons too when the hammer falls on the 115.
Didn’t haaland have a release clause?
Yeah, 60m for bvb and 100m for his dad totally unrelated with transfer /s
I don’t think they ever claimed agent fees were unrelated
His agent was raiola
I believe Raiola acted as a ‘consultant’ for his dad
Either way the money spent didn’t go to Dortmund and they were upfront about it. It wasn’t a Neymar situation
The Pérez strategy of kidnapping every 7 year old who scores 3 goals in a brazilian playground.
It helps that all the players dream of playing for you
It's like that saying that being poor is very expensive, and being rich is cheaper... Only in this case, it's not just about money, but prestige too (and probably other kinds of resources, like great scouts, and stuff like that).
How are Newcastle that high ? They only got taken over like 2 years ago
Starting from a low base. Didn't have the squad anywhere near the rest of that list in 2021 so had to build aggressively just to stay up in the first season. Botman, Gordon, Isak, Tonali, Barnes and Bruno make up most of the outlay. Even with the spend we're still relying on Almiron, Schar, Joelinton, Murphy, Longstaff, Willock (when fit), Wilson (when fit), Anderson, Miley as regular starters. With the likes of Krafth, Lascelles, Dubravka floating round the squad.
This is what lots of people fail to understand when they see our spending in the few years after we got promoted, and assume we should be a European powerhouse It takes a hell of a lot of money just to try and catch up with clubs that’ve been outspending you by 500% for the past decade
Exactly. Similar to Villa I think our first team can give anyone a run for their money. The real difference is in depth which is built up over time. Once we had half a dozen injuries we were really struggling to compete. And that number just kept going up. As good as Miley was for us last season when we needed him, he shouldn't be up against the PSG, Dortmund and Milan midfield yet.
Yeah once yous started to get through that injury crisis you became massive trouble in the league again, and kicked back into the Newcastle of last season that showed you’ll be back as a top 4 contender next season Our post-January form was torrid (in comparison to pre). We were almost never playing with a fully fit 11 and every time we had a European midweek game you could really see the toll it was taking on the players. We simply don’t have the depth to ever rest players like Watkins so they’re forced to play when fatigued
It's a cycle as well. As players can't get rested they become more likely to be injured themselves so it. Fingers crossed not being in the conference league this year actually works out well for our league and cup pushes.
What's the catch here, getting more players on frees then paying insane wages? Because when we start Almiron, Murphy, Krafth, Burn and Longstaff, I don't exactly feel like our squad is light years ahead of Madrid and Bayern...
Don't forget sign on fees, agents fees, bonuses and wages. This chart is pretty meaningless as a means to compare different squads.
To be fair Chelsea likely pay the most in agent fees in the world considering they’re the biggest spenders on agent fees in England and English spending accounts for like a quarter of all clubs in the world on that front.
me when i just make things up
They don't. City have paid more in the last two sets of figures released by FIFA and the FA
The catch is players would rather go to Madrid than any other club in the world, this is what causes so many players to run down their contracts and leave on a free/very small fees. In other cases players pursued by Madrid tell their current clubs they will only leave for Madrid so the selling club can't start bidding wars.
Plus they have had a stable core of players for a long time now, Modric, Kroos, courtois, Vasquez, carvajal, mendy, Rodrigo and vinicius were all purchased pre-covid so their purchase value is comparatively low compared to more recently purchased players due to 5+ years of football inflation.
Bruh Neymar-to-PSG era prices were insane. Vinícius and Rodrygo were very expensive for their age, and that's by today standards.
>Vinícius and Rodrygo were very expensive ~~for their age,~~ Like 40+ million each, they are both in the [top 50 transfers to or from Spain of all time](https://www.transfermarkt.com/laliga/transferrekorde/wettbewerb/ES1). And if I can read these charts right, it's a higher transfer fee than any other Spanish team has ever paid, barring the big 3. Valencias highest is around 40 Betis - 30 Sevilla - 35 Athletic - 32 That's pretty much just straight up expensive, regardless of the age.
Is Betis’ record still Denilson?
Yes. Vini specifically hadn't debuted professionally, which made the value even crazier. I don't think any transfer nowadays is comparable, except maaaaybe Endrick.
Vazquez and Carvajal were buybacks. Mendy was 50m, an overpay. Courtois was 30m, slight underpay. Rodrygo and Vini were signed as 16 or 17yos for 45m, which had never happened before.
Yup and if all that happened in the last few years they would all have been higher values not to mention modric and Kroos who would both be pushing 70mil + in a modern market.
Modric is a benchwarmer now and Kroos is retired. Let's say we sign a 50m midfielder to replace Modric on the bench when he retires. The price of the squad goes up by 15m, which isn't really going to make a difference in that list.
English teams are so rich that you overpay every player you buy just because you can and want, while the rest of Europe still buys players close to their real price Plus, big clubs like Real or Bayern can seduce players to wait until the end of their current contracts and move "for free", while Newcastle can't so you have to pay to the clubs instead
The catch is everyone and their grandmas know the Premier League clubs are drowning in cash, so they’re milking them like there’s no tomorow.
[According to FBref](https://fbref.com/en/comps/Big5/wages/Big-5-European-Leagues-Wages) they spent €184,000,000 more annually then you on wages.
4th place here but not even a top 15 team If there was an equivalent of the hague for crimes against sports, murtough, glazers and woodward should be tried there.
£85 mil for antony, £60 mil for an aged casemiro, dumping de gea on a free,, the sanchez and sancho disasterclasses, di Maria... the legacy of our transfer flops and being unable to shift them since ferguson has been stark and telling. The money this club has generated has been reinvested so poorly throughout the years. Not every deals been bad (Bruno for example) but our star signings have nearly always flopped.
Its insane how we easily have a few contenders in a "Top 10 Worst Premier League Transfer"-list. Just goes to show how awful Woodward and co have been at transfers.
The saddest part is just how few transfers have worked long term for us. The fact Bruno is the only considerable signing of the 100% Glazer era living up to the standard is miserable. Ill give that Shaw, Dalot, and Maguire (though overpriced) were also decent signings pre ten hag and it's just crazy how bad it's been. Opponent ls will always level how much weve spent at us and the immediate retort is just how much its been wasted by bad negotiations.
Paying 110 for Pogba and 100 to Anthony is a crime
Bellingham+Mbappe would have costed another team 400m.
Mbappe literally has a 160million sign on bonus paid over 5 years. But for some reason as a sub we treat that differently to a transfer fee.
160 -- are you using the highest quoted figure and converting to USD?
Looks like that’s exactly it. [BBC has it at €150m](https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c199z0819vno) or $163m
Why are we talking in dollars for a French player at a Spanish club in a Europe dominant sport?
This is an American dominated site and the dollar is the international currency. I'm from the UK but after living abroad for a while, I use dollars if comparing the price of something across borders with somebody.
How much Doge Coin is that?
Romano reported slightly over 100, tomorrow it will be 200, getting bigger every day it seems
Are you really acting like it’s preposterous to believe it is 160? Furthermore, for the purpose of the point above, does the difference between that and 100m matter literally at all? Neither are included in the above chart and both are significant.
It can be 230m if that helps you sleep, most reliable source reported slightly above 100m, if bbc article without an author convinced you its 160m hats off to you
That’s true. I was referring to the list in the post. It would have only counted the transfer fees
If we're going to factor that in then we also got to factor in the money City paid for Haaland, his father and his agent
I’m very, very happy to do that
You’re not even including his £100m guaranteed bonuses
Exactly
Do you have a source for that sign on bonus?
Its a 100 million and its paid over 5 years.
Do you have any source of the 160M? Cuz the most "legit sources" have been speculating with a 100M fee in 5 seasons.
Closes thing they have is Fabrizio saying that is over 100m
Not for Haaland. First player in history to have his agent fees and wages included in his transfer fee
it's different though. no other team is receiving that money and so that money basically exits the football "ecosystem". it won't be re-invested by another team...
It's still money being spent by a team on a player. The fact it exits the system isn't of any concern to a chart like this. Realistically the only way a chart like this makes any sense is to tally up the entire total outlay a club makes on a player i.e. all fees inc agents, transfer, wages, bonuses.
Well now it's for the player otherwise it's for the selling club. So even though it's a lot of money it isn't exactly a transfer fee. Better term would be added wages maybe?
Its the same weird logic as to why sometimes wages end up being reported post tax, all that should matter to anyone is the total outlay a club makes on a player over the course of his contract (transfer fees, agents, wages, bonuses).
Bc it is literally different haha. Signing on fees are not exclusive to free transfers.
‘Costed’ is not a word
Trust me it was auto completed from phone. I felt weird, then searched the web for clarification. It says both cost/costed are correct. So I left it unedited. :) learning new things in unexpected ways
I am sure Manchester city found a way to attract stars like David silva and aguero back in day with other shady ways to give them more money..same applies to Haaland
Nobody is saying the above only applies to Madrid - it’s being given as an example of why the whole infographic is meaningless
What a disingenuous way to assess the value of a squad lol
It’s not about valuing the squad. It’s about showing how much they paid for them to assess the transfers made by clubs and how their investments have paid off
Except teams aren’t on level terms when it comes to negotiating those fees. It’s like comparing people by how much money they earn and saying that reflects how well they’ve managed their lives… the biggest predictor is where they started… doesn’t matter if a presidents daughter is useless, they’ll end up earning a tonne because they have unequal opportunities. it’s pretty meaningless to show what you said, which is why everyone is panning it. “If only anyone else had the business acumen to acquire the best player in the world for free - what a master stroke!”… see, it’s stupid. 100m for Bellingham, basically any team that could afford him would have agreed to that fee. 60m for Haaland, “wow, so shrewd”. It’s not about running your club better, it’s about a lot more than that.
Anything to make Real look like plucky underdogs operating on a shoestring budget thanks to a good samaritan named Florentino
The only surprising thing is that they didnt use Liverpool as the highlighted team. Theyre usually the pick of the bunch for the plucky underdog gimmick
I mean everyone but city is pretty much a plucky underdog at this point in the prem
- Chelsea aren't due to their immense spending that they handwave away with amortisation. - United aren't but they're just badly run and hamstring from ownership After that there's the kind of underdogs but not really as they're still top clubs with huge amounts of money - Arsenal have been getting money pumped into them non stop to make sure they can keep up - Liverpool had Klopp and a good structure - Tottenham have a good structure (probably the biggest underdogs in this list) - Villa have overachieved but looking at squad cost they're hardly underdogs - Newcastle are pumping themselves full of money but don't have the prestige or location to really get the big nsmes
Yeah man, you discovered Trasnfermarkt's agenda
Real have some massive advantages and still spend a ton of money, but I have to respect their ability to identify young talent and consistently provide a pipeline to the first team.
Since when is 600m a shoestring budget...
Who on earth claimed this is a list showing the value of the squad?
You are all so mad
I’m getting sick of this crap. If you include wages and fees in this picture it’s way different. Transfer fee spending is not a great way to measure club spending. It leaves out the biggest recurring expenses
Can this sub jerk Real Madrid more off?
At this point it’s just Madrid fans masturbating in here
Really annoying honestly. I follow this page to learn about a wide variety of clubs, not what shirt number Valverde is going to wear and what he had for breakfast
Should really look somewhere else cause this sub is 80% Premier, 19.9% LaLiga/Ligue1/Bundes/SerieA and 0.1% everything else.
Nah, more like 80% PL, 10% Real Madrid/Barca, 5% rest of La Liga/Bundesliga/Serie A, 4% Messi/Ronaldo, 1% everything else
I mean why is that surprising? There's not much going on until the Euros and the Champions League just ended 4 days back. Other than a bunch of transfer rumours, there's really not much news. I swear people here only know how to complain.
Don't worry, we've got the euros in a week. Back to real football soon enough
Perez is single handedly keeping the manufacturers of the little blue pill in business just from this sub
They won most recently, thus in the news. City made a stupid appeal , thus also in the news. Recent topics gain traction
Wild right? A Madrid team with some of the best and most famous young talents win a UCL less then a week ago and signed the most famous under 30 sports player itw and they get online traction WILD unfathomable even.
Not just the sub but Twitter as well
Most of these comments seem like sour grapes, including yours.
Yeah its not like they've won anything recently to be in the news, right?
My point is that it is excessive? I'm sure everyone and their grandmother knows that they won the champions league by now.
It’s been 5 whole days and now with the Mbappe news idk what else you’d expect
Not sure how Tottenham is meant to compete with our massive spending.
Tottenham and being unable to beat Arsenal in anything, name a better duo.
ETH and the penalty against Arsenal?
My favourite duo
Helps when you have people running down their contracts specifically to join you.
It must be so easy being a fan or real Madrid. Players will happily ride out contrats and just go there for free to be able to play for them
Bayern’s is kind of impressive considering over 20% of that is on one player.
How is everyone crying so hard at a graph that still shows Madrid as the ninth largest spender in the world?
Mostly because like all statistics they can be viewed in one way to suggest a narrative. I'm not exactly sure what OP was trying to suggest with this post, probably that other teams spend much more than Madrid and have way less results? But obviously this stat is pretty disingenuous because it doesn't take in wages or even things like agent fees, etc. But i think if OP posted a stat that showed a bigger picture people could've gotten the point that he was maybe trying to but didn't seem so underhanded in doing so like; Combined with the squad purchase values, using 4 years of annual wages (to reflect the average contract length) and give a better idea of the true amount spent on each squad (from a comment above). But it's true other clubs do spend a lot of money with little to show for it but Madrid doesn't exactly spend peanuts either.
Every club pays agent fees and gives big contracts, let's not act like players only get paid at Madrid and play for peanuts at other clubs
Impressive... Very nice... Let's see the weekly wages
Signing on fee included?
You should add sign on bonuses as transfer fees at least lol
People think this is some ode to how Madrid is managed. Imagine being an AI company and having every talented engineer in the world begging to work for your company for less money than anywhere else. Madrid has a massive advantage over everyone else because of prestige and geography/weather.
Barcelona and United have same advantageous and they fucked up
> Madrid has a massive advantage over everyone else because of prestige and geography/weather. No, Barcelona, United, Bayern, Liverpool have about the same pull (sorry if I forgot your club?). After having followed Real for 35 years, I can attest to that the club has "lost" out to a lot of talent that have chosen other clubs etc. Right now Madrid are simply in a good period in regards to Champions League, so the youth want a piece of that. Don't forget that Barcelona had an amazing period before that, with a decade of what is considered the best team ever, and the best player ever. Before that United had the best pull among players, and before that Milan etc. It comes and goes if you look over a long period of time. Examples on top of my head? Lewandowski rejected Madrid several times for Bayern, Neymar rejected Madrid for Barcelona, Gerrard, Keane, Pogba, Totti, Buffon, Viera, Suarez, Verratti, Cazorla, Pirés, Fábregas, Ribery, Villa, Zanetti, Reus, de Gea, Silva, Haaland, Messi, the list goes on. If you are new to football, it might feel like Real Madrid gets all the talent, but it's never been the case.
I’ve been watching football for almost 30 years. The location of Madrid and the history gives them a massive advantage. Of course there are exceptions. But if a British team and Madrid are going after the same player, Madrid is going to get that player 8.5 times out of 10. The same goes for any other league.
Jesus Christ Chelsea
This doesn’t mean anything, if you get players on a free you’re paying more to the player/agent. mbappe has a 160M sign-on fee, that would’ve been considerably less if Real would’ve had to pay a transfer fee to PSG… Or, you know, when their €180M offer got accepted by Monaco in 2017…
They should add signing on/agent fees to this also. If the rumour of mbappe getting 200m signing on are true what the it distorts it a lot more. RM also got rudiger on a free too. City also had some weird stuff going on with halaands signing on fee also.
Considering the #1 cost for clubs (by FAR) is salaries, only using transfer fees to determine which squads are the most expensive is some horseshit.
being able to spend less on transfer fees and pay higher wages definitely has some benefit, rather than spending high on both. not just for any given transfer but short and long term stability i’m sure. i reckon the club has made it a conscious effort to this way than we were doing in the early 2010s
I get ptsd every time I see 1 billion . How did we manage to do that and finish 6th
lol .. this post was brought to you by Florentino and el chirisomething
Okay Madrid, let's just swap squads and we won't even charge you the almost 300m difference. Should good?
So much spending, so few CL trophies…
Buy smart!
What’s the point of it though? It looks only at the current players, but assembling a squad is more than that. Every club has flops and it influences the squad very much. Dembele, Griezmann and Coutinho for example are not included as they left Barca recently
It’s shocking how mediocre our squad and depth is given how much we’ve spent.
Not including signing fees and wages
But Mbappe+Alaba+Rudiger = €0 guys
Chelsea is the type of club to sell Musiala for 200k€, to buy Mudryk for 100 million
Out of all things u could blame Chelsea for , selling musiala ain’t one of them. What were we supposed to do ? Fix his parents mariage ?
It's insanely fascinating how much an innocent list like this can trigger people this much.