Interesting comparison to make but not sure what conclusions you can take from it reallyWhat is the best metric for judging 'good spending' clubs? I know there is no perfect solution, and there will always be a lot of debate on whether players are worth the money spent. A composite metric that incorporates a large number of variables would probably be very accurate but is very difficult to calculate.
One easily computable metric is the difference between the total market valuation of all the players and the net spending of the club - the business metric. This is a good surrogate for assessing the 'economic side' of transfers - the higher this value, the better the overall deals. For example, if United buy Sancho for £108m today, and United want to sell him next summer, we'd still be able to recoup every penny and more. So even though the net spending increases enormously, the business metric remains relatively unchanged. If Liverpool buy Salah for £40m and transform him into a £100m player (current valuation), that is better still. But if a club buys a player for £50m and is forced to sell him for a measly £20m in two years' time, it is a disastrous transfer.
This metric is extremely easy to compute and is a much better index than gross spending or net spending, in my opinion. For calculation purposes, a 10-year period seemed reasonable (2011-2020). Only the top seven big PL clubs were included in the calculation.
The new Business Metric
Net spending in the last 10 years (a) The current market valuation of the squad (b) The new "business metric" (b-a)
- Manchester City: £867m
- Manchester United: £814m
- Chelsea: £410m
- Arsenal: £380m
- Liverpool: £335m
- Everton: £271m
- Tottenham Hotspur: £135m
- Liverpool: £986m
- Manchester City: £933m
- Chelsea: £832m
- Manchester United: £719m
- Tottenham Hotspur: £697m
- Arsenal FC: £582m
- Everton FC: £441m
- Liverpool: + 651m
- Tottenham: + 562m
- Chelsea: + 422m
- Arsenal: + 202m
- Everton: + 170m
- Manchester City: + 66m
- Manchester United: - 95m (minus!)
United are the only top PL team that have spent more in the last decade than the total current valuation of our players, which means our players valuations’ have depreciated significantly in recent years. Players like Pogba, Maguire, Fred, Lindelof cost a lot of money to buy, but their stocks have since plummetted. Our spending is even worse than Manchester City's. City’s squad is more valuable than ours despite similar net spending. Liverpool have done the most amazing business in the last decade, buying inexpensive players and transforming them into expensive assets (Salah, Mane, etc). Chelsea get a lot of stick for spending extravagantly, yet they have a superior business metric than even Arsenal or Everton! Liverpool, Chelsea, and Spurs are not as wasteful as United or City.
Our overall ranking in the PL is much lower than #7 shown in the table, but I have only included the traditional top PL clubs (Wolves, Leicester, etc. are excluded).
We have wasted a walloping £0.75 billion more in building our squad compared with Liverpool! Forget one, we could buy seven Jadon Sanchos with that money. Ed has fleeced the Glazers!
10 years seems a bit too long to make comparisons about current squad value - how many players who came in 10 years ago are in those squads today?
Still didnt really need any numbers to realise we have pissed away shit loads of money in the transfer market in recent years
The source data is questionable as well but better than nothing I suppose