Transfer window special: how our spending comparesUpdated: October 28th, 2007
City were the second highest spenders in this summer’s transfer window, paying out a net £35.9m. Man United top the table on £41.3m. In all, Premier League clubs spent £454m on new signings and received £191m from player sales, which means that £263m has gone out of the Premiership this summer.
The table (below) was compiled mostly from figures given at the official Premier League site, premierleague.com, with the remainder from soccerbase.com and various newspapers. Although Newcastle paid £5.8m for our only summer sale, Joey Barton, it looks likely that the club only received £5.5m, with the remainder used to pay Barton’s ‘loyalty’ bonus. Deloitte & Touche put the cost of United’s signings at £51m, but that excludes the Tevez fee which was reported to be £12m (with £2m going to West Ham and £10m to the player’s agent).
Below is a breakdown of Sven’s signings. The fees for Elano and Petrov and Garrido come from the official site. Sky reported that Gelson Fernandes cost 9.5m Swiss francs, and premierleague.com and transfermarkt.de both put the Bianchi fee at €13m. There’s an element of doubt about the exact fees for Corluka and Bojinov. Premierleague.com say we only paid £4m for him, but I’ve used the €13m figure given by Zagreb’s vice-chairman. Bojinov’s fee was reported as both £5.7m and £6m and by premierleague.com and transfermarkt claim it was €8m (£5.4m), but as every other report has it at €8.5m (£5.7m) that’s the one I’m going with.
And finally, here’s how our transfer spending over the last five years compares to other Premiership clubs:
Thaksin news
Amid the reports about a second arrest warrant being issued for Thaksin, I found this story which suggests it might not be all doom and gloom for our new owner.
Pointing out that Thaksin is more popular than the king in some parts of Thailand, it claims that the newly-formed People Power Party (effectively Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai under a different name) could become the largest party in the Thai parliament after the next election. In that event, the prospect of Thaksin gaining access to the £1billion in frozen assets becomes a distinct possibility.
Meanwhile, the Bangkok Post reveals that Thaksin has suffered from deafness in one ear. Which makes me wonder if this is the reason we didn’t sign anyone at the end of the transfer window. “What’s that, Sven? You want to buy an elk for £9million? You must be mad. I could buy a million cows for that.”
