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Player Valuations and Transfer Fees

Always a bit baffled when people are perplexed by how much certain players sell for, whether they are worth their transfer fees or not, or what their actual price should be, as though they are a regular consumer product. So like Jadon Sancho is he worth the £70million Manchester United are willing to pay for his services? For me yes, if they feel they have those kind of financial resources to spend on that player and are willing to do so then certainly. What that doesn’t do is determine his quality as a player, which I feel people sometimes confuse. Was Ndombele worth the £53million (I think) we paid for him? What had he achieved up to that point in his career for us to make him out record signing? The fact is the club wanted him, identified in their estimation his worth to the team, and were willing to part with that some for him? That was his value because Spurs and Lyon decided that that’s what he was worth to both parties during their negotiations.

Ultimately though as a football fan I’m not overly fussed how much Spurs or any other club spend on their players. It’s not my money and I’m not in a position to determine whether the player meets that valuation both through their performances on the pitch and their commercial value. I just want to see the players my club buys do well on the pitch, whether they are a free transfer or cost £60million.

posted on 1/7/21

comment by Edward Elizabeth Hitler. (U14393)
posted 15 seconds ago
Sissoko a fiver and a curly wurly.
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That’s actually a fair price.

posted on 1/7/21

Presumably a fiver cash payment and a performance related curly wurly add on.

posted on 1/7/21

comment by Crazy Diamond (U22631)
posted 1 hour, 6 minutes ago
comment by Edward Elizabeth Hitler. (U14393)
posted 15 seconds ago
Sissoko a fiver and a curly wurly.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
That’s actually a fair price.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I would have said keep the curly wurly and we have a deal

posted on 2/7/21

What that doesn’t do is determine his quality as a player

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Doesn't it? Obviously a player's valuation it's based on how good they are. Let's take Kane as an example.

Purely on ability he's worth £100m or so. You look at Lukaku's fee to Inter and clearly Kane is better. More consistent in the pl at least.

Contract adds a bit (basically goodwill to convince the club to sell now instead of later). Say £30m.

Age. Probably knock off a bit here, Kane is likely at his peak at 28. -£20m

Nationality/marketing value. Home grown is nice, England captain and all round good guy is perfect for a club's PR. Especially if you're sport washing your questionable regime. £20m.

Player values are interesting (to me at least) not because of the numbers but the comparison with others in the market. You get to see how good coaches are turning potential into proven talent. Or if they're just buying trophies. You can't do that without looking at fees.

posted on 2/7/21

comment by Bãles left boot (U22081)
posted 24 minutes ago
What that doesn’t do is determine his quality as a player

---

Doesn't it? Obviously a player's valuation it's based on how good they are. Let's take Kane as an example.

Purely on ability he's worth £100m or so. You look at Lukaku's fee to Inter and clearly Kane is better. More consistent in the pl at least.

Contract adds a bit (basically goodwill to convince the club to sell now instead of later). Say £30m.

Age. Probably knock off a bit here, Kane is likely at his peak at 28. -£20m

Nationality/marketing value. Home grown is nice, England captain and all round good guy is perfect for a club's PR. Especially if you're sport washing your questionable regime. £20m.

Player values are interesting (to me at least) not because of the numbers but the comparison with others in the market. You get to see how good coaches are turning potential into proven talent. Or if they're just buying trophies. You can't do that without looking at fees.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

How much a player costs is often a decent way to gauge how good they are, but no I don’t think it always determines their actual quality, mostly because the whole thing is relative.

Is the most expensive player in the world by necessity the best? Things get even more murky when it comes to young players. Sometimes a player is “overvalued” by a team because of what they offer to their particular system, quite often there are price hikes because of bidding wars.

Ultimately as said in the OP a player is worth what a club is willing to pay for them in consideration of the many factors and context of that transfer.

For me questioning whether someone like Jadon Sancho is worth £78million, or if Neymar is worth £220million is a bit pointless because football isn’t a regular run of the mill market and ultimately the buying club have determined that that’s what they are willing to pay for them.

posted on 2/7/21

Ultimately as said in the OP a player is worth what a club is willing to pay
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Yeah of course. But that's mostly based on how good they are, right? Neymar isn't really representative as he was the best player in the world available for transfer.

I do think you're over emphasising the outliers instead of accepting what the norm is, though. The better you are the more you're worth.

posted on 2/7/21

comment by Bãles left boot (U22081)
posted 4 minutes ago
Ultimately as said in the OP a player is worth what a club is willing to pay
---

Yeah of course. But that's mostly based on how good they are, right? Neymar isn't really representative as he was the best player in the world available for transfer.

I do think you're over emphasising the outliers instead of accepting what the norm is, though. The better you are the more you're worth.
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I agree that the principle that the better you are the more you are worth is generally true, but then how much are you worth becomes a question.

Again using the Sancho example he’s one of the best young players in the world and that’s why he is going for a princely sum, and yet people are still questioning the transfer fee and deriding it as nonsensical.

For me it’s all relative to a range of factors and it’s kind of pointless for fans to get hung up on how much players cost and whether their price reflects their true value. Ultimately it’s not about how much a certain club paid for a player but what that player does on the pitch for them.

posted on 2/7/21

Right ok I'm with you. I'm not going to try and make sense of what some trolls on the internet have to say about a transfer fee.

posted on 2/7/21

What i find interesting about the fees/values piad is how you end up judging a player.

@ £53m mostrconsider NDombele to be a bit of a flop so far.

Had he cost £20m, the same player with the same performances would be seen as having a decent start to his career.

The value changes ones expectations and judgement of a player.

Son, by comparison, @ £22m has been an amazing signing, exceeding all expectations. Had he cost £75m you say he'd been a good signing who has lived up to expectations.

posted on 2/7/21

TBH, all this 'how much is a player worth' nonsense is just that, absolute nonsense.

On what planet was Coutinho 'worth' over £140m?

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