Interesting reading: Prem transfer table 06-11

By: Jack | January 3rd, 2011

It’s January. Let the spending commence.

brodie
Loves the smell of commerce in the morning

I came across this last week and found it a nice peruse, what with the scramble for reinforcements upon us. Now, I’m not trying to make some grandiose statement by swiping this information from transferleague.co.uk (great site). I only point it out to show that, to confirm many people’s beliefs, Chelsea have in fact been very active in the transfer market over the past five years. Contrary to most of those views, however, our net spending is low. Pretty damn low actually.

I won’t post the entire table – go to the Transfer League to check it in full – but let’s take a look at a few clubs shall we?

Manchester City are clearly first, spending £428,670,000 on purchases since 2006. They have raised just £55m from sales, leaving their net spending per season at £74,724,000 – nearly 60m more than anyone else in the top flight. Spurs are second, spending more than £18 million per season (gross of £225m).

Sunderland are third (14m per) and Villa fourth (12.4m per), which is probably surprising to some. Liverpool complete the top five, forking out just over 9m per season with a purchasing gross of £194 million.

Where’s Chelsea? Well, we are 10th – behind Stoke City, West Ham, Fulham and, yes, Wolverhampton. We have a gross outlay of £123.5 million, but sales of over £101m trims our net spend to just £21.7m. Thus our per season average is a skimpy £4.34m. Perhaps this would explain our recent plight?

United are 15th, mainly on the strength of the Cristiano Ronaldo sale, while Arsenal are last, spending at a negative rate over the past five years (-5.47m). Incredibly impressive.

Personally, I’d like to see our name moving up this table by the end of the month. We desperately need reinforcements. That or else risk missing out on Champions League football. More on potential targets later. Right now, thoughts on the transfer table?

Some Related Chelsea Posts:

Category: Analysis, Chelsea Team News, Potpourri, Statistics

« PL Recap: Chelsea 3-3 Aston Villa | Home | Will Studge head out on loan? »

pfelds

Our issues to me, stem from a pompous front office and bad scouting, chelseas decision makers are collectively like the attention span of a 11 year old popular kid, once offended you never see them again, they cant decide what they want, and end up doing nothing, and after the fact they claim our academy will solve our issues..... i am too dissappointed to even think or write any more.................
Jack

Well put, sir. We all feel your pain.
arn00b

CFC has one of the stupidest transfer policies in the world. Buy high, sell free. 8 million for Deco`s two (crap) seasons and then released. 16.8 for Crespo, released free. Shevchenko. Pizarro. SWP, paid 21 sold for 9. It`s like they`re doing it on purpose. I can guarantee you that this generation of 30-somethings is going to leave for free.
Jack

Um, any cash we get from our current nucleus is a bonus. They've all be instrumental in our success and have proved great buys regardless of cost.

But, to agree on our recent travails in el mercato, add Bosginwa (16m) and Zhirkov (18m) to the list of overpriced imports. It's not that we buy poorly - which we do much of the time - but that we buy wrong.
arn00b

It`s bad strategy to buy overpriced players and use them until they`re worth nothing (or prove to the world that they`re actually worth nothing).

5m for Taiwo, who is now playing in League One. So many youngsters are bought high and sold at a loss, without having contributed anything. Then there`s Yossi, who turned 30 before he even played for Chelsea, a Liverpool bench player... You can call him a "supersub", hardly a find.

The phrase "great find" and Chelsea never seem to go together.

Sometimes it`s good to cash out. Is it possible that Benfica has more and better scouts than CFC?