Top 20 biggest spending clubs in the last 8 years - CIES

MUFC OK

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Net spend alone does not tell the whole story.

Gross spend alone tells an even more incomplete story though. You can't simply judge on what a manager has spent. It's equivalent to saying that it would make no difference to this team whether we had Countinho or not. Or that selling Suarez had no impact. It's not simply a case of "new manager gets to spend on what he likes whilst getting rid of junk".
So you cant judge a manager for spending £500m or whatever, why? Whether you are reinvesting transfer proceeds or taking the money from the pocket of an oil rich owner, really makes no difference in terms of what has been spent.
 

RoyH1

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The likes of Valencia, Milan and Everton spending more than Bayern? Crazy stuff.
 

B20

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The line that this kind of table provokes is that '.... should be doing better/havent won the title despite their spend' which brings along this net spend discussion. However, regardless of that you would expect that £1bn of investment from any team over a relatively short period would bring substantial on field success.
Let's take Benteke as a case in point. Bought for 32, sold for the same a year later. Net cost - wages. Then we spent it on Mane. Grand for net spend, atrocious for gross spend. But neither is quite true.

Gross spend tells a story of spending 62m on Benteke and Mane. With a conclusion that a lot of money was wasted on Benteke.
Net spend in itself is also too simplistic unless you look at it over time, since it tells you we earned money on upgrading Benteke to Mane.
Net spend over time tells a story of how one doesn't happen without selling the other, with a conclusion that we wasted a year of wages on Benteke (bad enough in itself, mind), since having to field Benteke for a fecking year instead of someone actually good has its own cost to consider.
 

WensleyMU

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Why is transfer income treated differently to other avenues of income?

Seems like some need to justify their enormous spending for zero return... Wonder why that might be?
 

Minimalist

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All the willy waving about spending (net or otherwise) is a load of bollox. It is what it is. Some clubs can afford to spend a lot of money because they’re well run clubs with a long history of success. Others because they won the sugar daddy lottery. Most clubs can’t afford to spend we much as these clubs. Why does anybody give a shit? Is there a competition I haven’t heard about where trophies are awarded for the sexiest balance sheets?
I just find it amusing when a lot of people complain we haven’t spent enough money.
 

B20

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So you cant judge a manager for spending £500m or whatever, why? Whether you are reinvesting transfer proceeds or taking the money from the pocket of an oil rich owner, really makes no difference in terms of what has been spent.
It makes a difference in terms of how much value is added to a squad in the final equation, when you are also taking out some of the highest value assets in the squad to pay for it, vs not having to take out your most valuable assets while adding to the squad. It's pretty basic really, both for math and football. To say only gross spend matters is equivalent to saying having coutinho in our squad would make no difference to this squad - which is obviously stupid.
 

B20

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Why is transfer income treated differently to other avenues of income?
Sigh... because other avenues of income don't lessen the quality of the squad the way player sales do.

This is all so fecking basic.
 

DonnieDarko

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If we count net spend, can we count squad depreciation value too.
Say 2 teams have squads worth £500m, Team A doesn't replace any players until they get old and retire, then replaces them with another £500m worth of players, Team B constantly sell their players when their value is high and reinvests that money in new players worth £500m.
Team A and Team B now once again have squads worth £500m, despite Team A having spent £500m more than Team B to get there. Does this mean Team A should have higher expectations than Team B because they have a higher net spend, even though the overall net squad strength is mostly unchanged?
Value deprecation may or may not be a thing, depends how you manage it. E.g. we bought Coutinho for nothing, he improved over time and eventually became worth 140m. If we take this in isolation we may say our squad would be worth 130m more than when we've just signed him. So, getting hold on to him until he retires would mean not only that our squad cost equalled, but also that we had a 5-6 year period when our squad cost was hugely better because of him. This additional squad cost (which somehow translates into squad quality) could have allowed us to win trophies, bring more sponsor money and eventually increase our baseline squad cost even more.
Now let's assume we sold Coutinho and spent the money entirely on new players. Now our squad may on paper be worth the same, but there can be huge difference in quality. Coutinho was valued 140m in our club and our system. The quality player brings to a new team does not always correlate with the money spent. Some transfers flop, some look like a bargains. So, shuffling players, even with a negative net spend, is a gamble, whereas keeping the players you have that represent quality is not.

De Gea is a young and extremely talented player. It would be a shame leaving him in the club for the next 10 years and letting his value deprecate, right? But for some reason I don't see anyone of United fans wanting to sell him now.
Barca seem to do just fine with Messi's value deprecation, and were very frustrated having to reallocate that Neymar asset. There must be a reason why.
 

WensleyMU

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Sigh... because other avenues of income don't lessen the quality of the squad the way player sales do.

This is all so fecking basic.
Laughable argument. Other avenues provide the means to increase the quality of the squad just as transfer income does.

Being unable to hold on to your better players isn't cause for praise, it simply shows the level of your club compared to others.

There's a reason the most expensive failures in the last 3 decades of football are the only ones who push this argument.
 

Minimalist

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What is “enough money”? Is there an exact cut-off point? We’ve definitely wasted a shit load of money. I can say that with confidence.
Exactly. You’ll never know how much you need.

And yes to the second part. The money isn’t the issue, it’s who we’re spending money on.
 

tomaldinho1

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Just to clarify, the whole net spend thing is just ridiculous. If you are truly assessing a club's net spend then you must account for everything, not just player sales. It's an inaccurate thing to use as it is currently and I just don't understand why it matters to some people.

You should feel no shame in your club splashing the cash, you shouldn't win arguments for spending less money/having a good 'net spend' because football is on another planet financially and all that matters to clubs is winning. Even if Pep won nothing more with City, he'd be considered a success despite an outlay that is genuinely more than some small countries' GDP. We pay a ridiculous amount for BT Sport or Sky Sports, pay through the nose to go to a stadium and then get all high and mighty because our club has spent a huge a mount of money - too right, that's what we as the consumers are paying for.
 

B20

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What is “enough money”? Is there an exact cut-off point? We’ve definitely wasted a shit load of money. I can say that with confidence.
Enough money is all the money that went into owner's pockets, or to service needless debts and so forth. In the worst end of the scale are the Glazers or G&H who piled their own debts acquired to buy the club on the club itself. In the less acrimonious, but still bad, end of the scale is Arsenal, who had legitimate debts to service after their stadium, but didn't need to service them as aggressively as they did - to the detriment of their competitiveness.

Owners who see football clubs as enrichment ventures should be seen as cancers on football, basically.
 

roonster09

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Yeah. Having said that obsessing over spend in general is daft there’s a particular sort of lunacy around getting hung up on net spend.

We lost the two best central defenders in the country for (basically) nothing when Rio and Vidic moved on. Yet this is apparently irrelevant when our spending is put in context, whereas the sale of Coutinho for a fecking fortune (in a position where they already had good cover) means that €140m of Liverpool’s investment in their squad suddenly doesn’t count.
Exactly. At least for a club you can use that excuse, that club xyz can't spend without selling players but it's bizarre to use that argument for managers.

For example, Klopp took over, Liverpool had already spent nearly 250 million in previous 2 summers. Klopp had players like Coutinho who can be sold for big money whereas other managers didn't. So all of a sudden signing 150 million worth of players means nothing because club sold Coutinho who was already at the club before Klopp took over.

At least should use net spend for the club or should add 150 million Liverpool made to Rodgers time as he was the one who signed him.
 

Rood

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All the willy waving about spending (net or otherwise) is a load of bollox. It is what it is. Some clubs can afford to spend a lot of money because they’re well run clubs with a long history of success. Others because they won the sugar daddy lottery. Most clubs can’t afford to spend we much as these clubs. Why does anybody give a shit? Is there a competition I haven’t heard about where trophies are awarded for the sexiest balance sheets?
Well personally I find it interesting to see how much correlation there is between squad investment and success

Generally there is very little correlation between net spend (gross spend is meaningless in this regard) and success - whereas there is generally some correlation between wage bills and trophies
 

B20

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Laughable argument. Other avenues provide the means to increase the quality of the squad just as transfer income does.

Being unable to hold on to your better players isn't cause for praise, it simply shows the level of your club compared to others.

There's a reason the most expensive failures in the last 3 decades of football are the only ones who push this argument.
FFS.
 

Rood

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Yeah. Having said that obsessing over spend in general is daft there’s a particular sort of lunacy around getting hung up on net spend.

We lost the two best central defenders in the country for (basically) nothing when Rio and Vidic moved on. Yet this is apparently irrelevant when our spending is put in context, whereas the sale of Coutinho for a fecking fortune (in a position where they already had good cover) means that €140m of Liverpool’s investment in their squad suddenly doesn’t count.
but this is exactly why you have to look more at the wage bills rather than transfer fees


Should be looking at "player costs" as a standard really, the cost of fees+wages-sales, rather than just transfer fees when assessing investments in the squad. It's weird that we're not there yet by now.
Yes - most of the info is out there nowadays at least, although there is an issue with publicly available annual wage bill info in that it usually includes all the non-football staff employed by a club as well
 

roonster09

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Should be looking at "player costs" as a standard really, the cost of fees+wages-sales, rather than just transfer fees when assessing investments in the squad. It's weird that we're not there yet by now.
You will never get accurate figures. For example, every possible bonuses and image rights are added in reported Sanchez wages and then Salah reported wages was laughable as he was more than that at Roma itself. As usual English journalists don't get their gross and net wages and thought Salah was on 50K.
 

cyberman

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Laughable argument. Other avenues provide the means to increase the quality of the squad just as transfer income does.

Being unable to hold on to your better players isn't cause for praise, it simply shows the level of your club compared to others.

There's a reason the most expensive failures in the last 3 decades of football are the only ones who push this argument.
Exactly. Liverpool have been the spending big since the EPL began for little return, it just so happens they sold a player during the craziest summer in history to cover their costs during a very specific period of time.
Utd selling Martial to Bayern for 60m doesn't take Jose 60m closer to a transfer genius
 

RobinLFC

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Exactly. Liverpool have been the spending big since the EPL began for little return, it just so happens they sold a player during the craziest summer in history to cover their costs during a very specific period of time.
Utd selling Martial to Bayern for 60m doesn't take Jose 60m closer to a transfer genius
That's some excellent reverse engineering - we would not have been able to make those costs in the first place if we hadn't sold said player.

Anyway, another pointless discussion about net spend. Both of our clubs spent a lot of money, no matter what the resources were. Big fecking deal.
 

andersj

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Not this again, irrelevant!

If you have spent £1B improving your squad (Liverpool), you've spent £1B improving your squad. It doesn't matter where the money comes from.
I agree that net spend is a bit of an irrelevant term. However, it is also possible to over simplify and one should try to understand the whole picture;

- Man Utd and Liverpool was in 2016, when Mourinho arrived, at the same level.
- Man Utd and Liverpool have since then spent approx the same amount.
- But Liverpool have been able to spend the same due to player sales. Including the sale of their best players.

Considering the bigger picture it is obvious that Klopp has managed his resources better if Man Utd and Liverpool end up with a similar season.
 

MUFC OK

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Let's take Benteke as a case in point. Bought for 32, sold for the same a year later. Net cost - wages. Then we spent it on Mane. Grand for net spend, atrocious for gross spend. But neither is quite true.

Gross spend tells a story of spending 62m on Benteke and Mane. With a conclusion that a lot of money was wasted on Benteke.
Net spend in itself is also too simplistic unless you look at it over time, since it tells you we earned money on upgrading Benteke to Mane.
Net spend over time tells a story of how one doesn't happen without selling the other, with a conclusion that we wasted a year of wages on Benteke (bad enough in itself, mind), since having to field Benteke for a fecking year instead of someone actually good has its own cost to consider.
It shows you wasted £32 million on Benteke, or more to the point that you have spent £62m on two players, regardless of whether one good, one bad, both good or both shite, and regardless if one was sold. The table is what it says on the tin - Top Spenders in a certain timeframe. The above is the only exception, where a player is bought and then sold in the time frame, they can cancel each other out, but where one player is sold for x and another purchased for y they are clearly two different assets. It would make sense to deduct the cost of one from another.

It makes a difference in terms of how much value is added to a squad in the final equation, when you are also taking out some of the highest value assets in the squad to pay for it, vs not having to take out your most valuable assets while adding to the squad. It's pretty basic really, both for math and football. To say only gross spend matters is equivalent to saying having coutinho in our squad would make no difference to this squad - which is obviously stupid.
The way I see it, £1bn invested in players is just that, regardless of whether you've sold others outside of that. There is no metric which is better than the other, but I do think 'net spend' muddy's the waters.

Take this scenario, 2 teams are promoted both and spend £500m on new players. Prior to that, one of those teams had sold a player for £100m. Which team would have the better squad at the end?

Just because you sold a player for a fee, it doesn't mean the money you subsequently throw around is 'cancelled out', investment is investment and a manager can be judged for that imo.
 

TheReligion

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I think net-spends should be taken into account. And arranged in increasing order, in the 2010-2018 period:

1. City: -1032m
2. PSG: -874m
3. United: -772m
4. Barca: -598m
5. Chelsea: -538m
6. Juve: -409m
7. Liverpool: -327m
8. Milan: -296m
9. Arsenal: -286m
10: Madrid: -260m

Madrid are easily the club who've gotten most bang for buck. Barca, Juve and to an extent, City, have also seen good returns for their money.
On the other end, Milan ought to be embarrassed. Neither us or Arsenal have made good transfers, either.
Why have you just made your own table hijacked the thread which isn't about net spends as the title suggests?

The only table people want to see in this thread is the one it actually refers to.
 

Henrik Larsson

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Liverpool spending over a billion and all they have to show for it is one League Cup in 2011/2012? That's truly incredible.
 

SpyLuke10

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I think you have to look at a club's overall money available every year to spend, if we profited say 180M every year, but we had to use 80M of that to pay back debt, then there is 100M left to spend, thats what you can spend or try to balance to after a transfer window. You can afford to have a net spend of 100M. Now if Arsenal for example profited 70M every year, but they didn't have to pay any debts back, then they could afford to have a net spend of 70M and be fine.

Technically our net spend is 30M higher, but in the context of all finances and profits and shit (and I haven't even mentioned the potential extra money signing new players can bring in from marketing stuff), our net spend is effectively the same. We've spent within our means in the exact same way. Accumulate that over 8 windows and our net spend would be 240M higher in this theoretical situation despite spending the same as them relative to our overall profits (not just transfer sales).

Having more money and spending more money, you also often have to fork out more for players. Players are talked about as 50M pound players when we're linked to them but then a while later you hear about them going to another bundesliga club or serie A club for example for like 20M. The clubs with big revenues also tend to pay bigger wages to players, and so there is a tendency to get a fair bit less back when we sell players than we should. This obviously has an effect on net spend too.

As others have mentioned holding on to players and keeping them until they leave for practically nothing or retire at United means basically no resale value, we've done that with a decent number of players in the past 8 years.

I'd be interested to see a split for this list of the biggest spending clubs of the last 8 years. 1 for the last 5 years and 1 for the 4 years before that. I don't we'd figure that highly at all on a spending ranking for spending 2010-2013. Net spend would be interesting to see here too.
 

JohnSuarez

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Surely if one team spent £500m but received £500m in player sales, the the expenditure at the end is £0

Whereas if a team spent £500m but didn’t sell player, the expenditure at the end is £500m

I don’t get why people are so fast to dismiss this, when obviously it’s a massive factor, not the only factor as aging quality players is another factor.
 

cyberman

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That's some excellent reverse engineering - we would not have been able to make those costs in the first place if we hadn't sold said player.

Anyway, another pointless discussion about net spend. Both of our clubs spent a lot of money, no matter what the resources were. Big fecking deal.
Not really true when your board didn't want to sell Coutinho, even keeping him for an extra 5 months before the player forced the sale.
Even then you wanted VVD when you thought Coutinho was staying and even briefed the press that the VVD and Kieta purchases were independent from the sale.
 

breakout67

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To be more accurate - Net spend should be taken into account when looking at effectiveness or ROI of spend.
But that's not what CIES are doing? They are looking at the return on total investment. Its quite normal to try to isolate one factor and look at it's effects, then compare it with other factors.
 

NikkiCFC

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Not this again, irrelevant!

If you have spent £1B improving your squad (Liverpool), you've spent £1B improving your squad. It doesn't matter where the money comes from.
If you spend 900m for new players and sell for 850m you spent less then team who just bought one player for 55m and sell no one. Net spend is everything .
 

MUFC OK

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If you spend 900m for new players and sell for 850m you spent less then team who just bought one player for 55m and sell no one. Net spend is everything .
:lol:

No, you would have spent £900m. You would also have received £850m, they are separate factors.
 

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If you spend 900m for new players and sell for 850m you spent less then team who just bought one player for 55m and sell no one. Net spend is everything .
Nonsense!

You have spent 900M vs spending 55M. How can you not see the difference?

Are you suggesting a squad assembled for 900M is no different to a squad assembled for 55M? :houllier:
 

Klopper76

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I'm all for analyzing a clubs spending individually to see whether or not they've done a good job investing in players, but comparing them against each other seems daft to me.

All of these clubs operate within different financial restraints, with different wage structures, transfer budgets per window etc. Something like Coutinho pushing for and getting a transfer to Barcelona or Courtois going on strike to force a move to Madrid is a variable that dramatically impact what a club does in a transfer window. Chelsea wouldn't have spent a record fee on a keeper if Courtois would've stayed. An injury to Chamberlain is what probably prompted us to go and spent 13 million on Shaqiri, and Arsenal & now Spurs were/are unable to spend as much as others because they both built/are building new stadiums.

These variables create an unbalanced comparison when looking at what clubs are doing or have done in the market imo.
 

Revan

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Not this again, irrelevant!

If you have spent £1B improving your squad (Liverpool), you've spent £1B improving your squad. It doesn't matter where the money comes from.
Not if you have to sell your best players (Suarez, Coutinho) in order to improve your squad. That's bullshit and we know it.
 

wub1234

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Not this again, irrelevant!

If you have spent £1B improving your squad (Liverpool), you've spent £1B improving your squad. It doesn't matter where the money comes from.
If you take the example of Barcelona, they sold Neymar for £200 million, hence they were able to buy Coutinho. It's hard to see how selling one of the best players in the world for a vast fee is 'irrelevant'.
 

wub1234

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Well personally I find it interesting to see how much correlation there is between squad investment and success

Generally there is very little correlation between net spend (gross spend is meaningless in this regard) and success - whereas there is generally some correlation between wage bills and trophies
The problem that you have with the statistics in this example is that they begin at the completely arbitrary point of 2010. So Real Madrid's figure does not include the summer of 2009 when they signed Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema, Alonso, plus several other players, for what were monstrous fees at the time. Kaka was a world record, and then they broke their own world record to sign Ronaldo. But it does include them selling Ronaldo, in a vastly inflated market.

It also doesn't account for this inflation, so clubs that have signed big players more recently have paid more, whereas those who signed major players even as recently as 5 years ago paid significantly less. This is really a matter of timing, rather than any great insight, frugality or inspired transfer policy.
 

giorno

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Exactly. This net spend is a lazy excuse to protect their manager. The fact remains klopp has spent more than Jose. Net spend is one for the finance team to look upon.
It isn't. Net Spend doesn't exist. It's a lazy, generally uninformed expression made up by fans and journos who have no clue how accounting and finance actually work

Profit(and i'm talking actual profit, not transfer fee) from sales does matter and impact a club's spending power, but it doesn't work club spends X for player Y, sells player Z for X--->net spend 0.
 

RedRonaldo

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I don't get why some people say net spend is irrelevant.

For example, if we sell our whole squad for 400m to raise fund, and then just spend 100m of it to buy all the average players to fill up our squad, sure its totally different than just spending 100m to buy new players without selling any of our players, no?