As the season draws to a close, focus switches back to the great pre-occupation in English football – transfers. Manchester United, the country’s biggest club, takes more than its fair share of headlines. Who’s in? Who’s out? Success or failure next season is pegged entirely on getting the right players in and pushing the wrong ‘uns out.
This is because United’s recruitment has been dismal for the past half-decade. Great swathes of money have been vomited on players who had no business playing for the club. The poor signings have come in all shapes and sizes; players lacking the requisite speed or strength to play in the Premier League (Blind, Darmian, Rojo), players lacking the requisite technical quality (Lukaku, Bailly, Fellaini), players lacking the requisite professionalism (Shaw, Pogba, Martial). The only consistent criterion seems to have been their unsuitability. Retention decisions have also been poor – Herrera, a reliable but unspectacular player, is allowed to walk away for nothing; Phil Jones’ contract is extended, again. He has been at the club since 2011 and if he sees out his current contract will have been at the club for twelve years.
Amongst the expensive, inappropriate acquisitions, it is a player that came to the club on a free transfer that feels somehow the worst, and most expensive, decision. Alexis Sánchez was widely considered one of the best players in Europe when United signed him. They beat off competition from Manchester City to obtain him. A closer look at the player, and the circumstances around his availability should, however, have set alarm bells ringing.
Yes, he had scored and created plenty of goals for a relatively poor Arsenal team but at what cost? He gave the ball away more often than virtually any player in the league. He shirked his defensive responsibilities. He berated his teammates and, on at least one occasion, walked out of training. He was indulged by an ageing Arsène Wenger, lionized by a miserable fanbase and miscast as the ‘best of the rest’ behind Messi and Ronaldo. Like many players before him, Arsenal, with their pretty, highlight reel football made him appear more than he was. An educated, intelligent sporting director would have been able to spot this – but none was in place.
More obviously, in a business where every transfer rumour quotes a player’s age, he was twenty-nine years old. And not a young, fresh twenty-nine, an old one. He had already played more than six hundred games for club and country and had played in international tournaments in each of the past four summers. His performances in the first half of the season had been hit and miss. For a club who had been desperate to rid themselves of Wayne Rooney, it was strange that they couldn’t spot a player who was melting before their eyes.
And then, as ever, there was the money. It was the reason that the player had let his contract run down, having rejected an offer of £300,000 a week from Arsenal. It was also the key factor in beating City to his signature, but if a club owned by an oil rich state, committed to mislabelling external funding as commercial income to circumvent Financial Fair Play rules, say a player is asking for too much, you should listen. They did not and the player signed a four and half year deal reportedly worth £25 million a year. Add in the signing on fee for the player and commission paid to intermediaries and the whole wretched deal will have cost the best part of £150 million. So far this has bought three Premier League goals.
There will be many free agents available this summer, though the most appealing of these will have signed pre-contracts, as Aaron Ramsey has for Juventus. These kinds of deals will become more prevalent in the post-Neymar to PSG era, but clubs must be exceptionally careful and really drill into the inherent value of a deal.
Sánchez is the most excruciating example of an expensive free transfer, but he is not alone. A player available on a free has many more options than he would otherwise, how else could Emre Can end up playing for Juventus, or Hal Robson-Kanu sign for a Premier League club after scoring eight goals in three years for Reading in the Championship? But the whole idea of a transfer is to get a player who can help you on the sporting side for the best possible price financially.
Transfers are a sub-section of the futures market; £50 million a goal is clearly a terrible return on investment, but so is a long, expensive contract given to the wrong player, who takes up a squad place that could be better used by a player who could make a difference – perhaps an academy graduate or a younger player coming in for a small fee and a smaller contract, with more hunger, potential to improve and re-sale value.
Each sporting director should have two statements tattooed on their wrists and daubed on the walls of their office – ‘Past Performance is Not a Guarantee of Future Success’ and ‘Free Does Not Mean Free’.
