Tomkins: End shocking transfer myth

[Charly]

When judging a manager's transfer record, using only gross spend makes no distinction between buying one player for £100m and buying 20 players on a one in/one out basis for £5m each. That's bonkers.

Buts thats the whole point. Why do we care about players sold in this instance? iF Rafa said I need to spend £200m to win the title, £200m worth of players, he would have had that £200m worth of players by now. Thats what he would have invested in the team, otherwise you ge ta situation at Arsenal where their spend is a negative figure. That doesnt tell you what Wenger actually paid out for players.

[Guest]

I have no idea what you are talking about.

All I am saying is Rafa spent £200m

Look at it another way.

If you are going to buy a new top for £20, and sell your old one for £10. You have spent £20 on tops.

When you ask Rafa how much will it cost to assemble a championship winning team, he will count the cost of the players he needs, say £150m. Spending that £150m and then recouping £50m, he has still spent £150m

But not to judge how much a manager needs to spend on players to win a title.

Ridiculous is a strong word, considering I have justified its use.

No I don't think you have justified it.

It's all about an outlay of money within one budgeted term. In other words, he has only £20m to spend ... i.e hard cash available to him. Buying a player valued at £20m doesn't mean he's gonna splash out the whole £20m in one go, it's all done in installments nowadays. It is about managing the whole budget, knowing there are other potential deals to fall through, whether outgoing and incoming.

At the end of the day, it's all about net spent. He can only use the money he has at his disposition. If he's agreed a deal to sign Torres for £20m, he won't be paying this amount straight away. I'm no accountant, but in the books it will be shown as £40m out and £20m in, meaning he's only spent £20m during a specific transfer period.

Simple maths mate.

[Guest]

Buts thats the whole point. Why do we care about players sold in this instance? iF Rafa said I need to spend £200m to win the title, £200m worth of players, he would have had that £200m worth of players by now. Thats what he would have invested in the team, otherwise you ge ta situation at Arsenal where their spend is a negative figure. That doesnt tell you what Wenger actually paid out for players.

Every other team be it Arsenal, Manure, Man.City or Chelsea have to balance the books. It's all about a budget available to a manager. I don't think that Arsenal have got a negative figure if you look at their books. That would be completely bad business practice. Chelsea had it planned that they would break even 4 or 5 years down the line and that they required to spend a huge amount within a period of 2 or 3 years to be able to compete. That's because they had the 'cash' available straight away.

[cumbriankop]

Buts thats the whole point. Why do we care about players sold in this instance? iF Rafa said I need to spend £200m to win the title, £200m worth of players, he would have had that £200m worth of players by now. Thats what he would have invested in the team, otherwise you ge ta situation at Arsenal where their spend is a negative figure. That doesnt tell you what Wenger actually paid out for players.

benitez wouldn't of spent 200m on players by now if he said i want 200m to spend unless he sold some players every year to enable him to have the budget to spend 200m over 5 years.

you can't invest what you dont have. you can't buy a house for 200k without selling your old house for 140k first unless you have the cash. from that read our current situation. we are not cash buyers. we had to loan to buy torres - we all know this and were unhappy about it, but this highlights perfectly the fact we dont have 40m spare lying around to buy players with a year. we have to finance these aquisitions through sales and other means.

going back to the house analogy i DO understand what your saying, you have spent 200k on a house, like 200m has gone on players. but the point is you spent a net of 60k to get what you want and this is important financially. if benitez had walked in and said i want 200m for players and got it, we'd have 200m of players plus say 100m worth of the old ones we hadn't sold. this isnt the case

often we have to sell a 1st team player for money to try and replace and improve them.

example.

owen out - 8
morientes in - 6
morientes out - 4(?)
bellamy in - 7
bellamy out - 8
keane in - 18
keane out - 15

benitiez from this scenario can be taken to have spent gross 31m or net -4m

i think that the true figure that represents his spend on this striker position for the 1st team is 18m. the last figure paid, which is why the squad value figure tomkins uses i feel is so accurate. and now as we have sold keane we lost his value, financial and football, but will replace it hopefully in summer. at this point if its 8 or 28 then that will be the figure spent on the squad, not the players that preceded him.

taking a net spend figure and including players we havent got anymore in a team is beating rafa both ways. we can't blame him for spending 200m on a team and not getting us to perform like a 200m team, as we're a 127m team

[Vermilion]

Gross spend is an utterly idiotic indicator.

If you moved from one £3m house to another and they are both equally good value for money, you wouldn't expect visitors to say on completion of the house tour "you've dropped three million quid and your home is no ****ing better than the previous one" whilst licking the window, would you?

[EwarWoo]

Gross spend is an utterly idiotic indicator.

If you moved from one £3m house to another and they are both equally good value for money, you wouldn't expect visitors to say on completion of the house tour "you've dropped three million quid and your home is no ****ing better than the previous one" whilst licking the window, would you?

I dunno, if they were licking a window I don't think that statement would come as a major surprise.

[Darkon]

I have no idea what you are talking about.

All I am saying is Rafa spent £200m

Look at it another way.

If you are going to buy a new top for £20, and sell your old one for £10. You have spent £20 on tops.

When you ask Rafa how much will it cost to assemble a championship winning team, he will count the cost of the players he needs, say £150m. Spending that £150m and then recouping £50m, he has still spent £150m

But that makes no sense - you need to take the total calculations in to it.

Going by the analogy from buying houses, you may have bought a 200k expensive house, but selling your old for 140k means you only spend 60k, which is why you can afford the house.

Your added value to your properties is 60k, and not 200k. Same goes with a squad, rafa's squad is worth 80m more than when he arrived, and not 200m more, considering the price of the old team.

Basically we could only have gained 4 extra 20m players (seems to be what people count in), and not 10 as some might think. And that is not considering the squad players needed.

[Neil Young]

Buts thats the whole point. Why do we care about players sold in this instance? iF Rafa said I need to spend £200m to win the title, £200m worth of players, he would have had that £200m worth of players by now. Thats what he would have invested in the team, otherwise you ge ta situation at Arsenal where their spend is a negative figure. That doesnt tell you what Wenger actually paid out for players.

But you have to take account of players who aren't at the club any more. If they were still at the club then some of the ones who are there wouldn't be.

The only reasonable way to to assess his transfer record is to see how much the current squad cost plus or minus the net transfer spend on those who have left the club.

In other words, net spend.

Perhaps you need to allow for a time component too so you can also look at net spend per year since a manager buying club will inevitably spend more the longer he is in charge.

[dww]

Is it possible that neither nett nor gross spend alone are suitable metrics and that possibly a set of different indicators (possibly involving both) is the best way to go? Even if we could agree on a perfect statistic to judge the value of transfers made by Rafa I have a feeling that everyone would find their own interpretation that fitted with their pre-existing ideas.

[Neil Young]

Is it possible that neither nett nor gross spend alone are suitable metrics and that possibly a set of different indicators (possibly involving both) is the best way to go? Even if we could agree on a perfect statistic to judge the value of transfers made by Rafa I have a feeling that everyone would find their own interpretation that fitted with their pre-existing ideas.

People choose statistics that fit their own preconceptions? But that means there's no point debating stats ad nauseam.

OK, Einstein, what precisely do you think this forum is for?

[Neil Young]

Is it possible that neither nett nor gross spend alone are suitable metrics and that possibly a set of different indicators (possibly involving both) is the best way to go? Even if we could agree on a perfect statistic to judge the value of transfers made by Rafa I have a feeling that everyone would find their own interpretation that fitted with their pre-existing ideas.

Or, in other words, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

[dww]

People choose statistics that fit their own preconceptions? But that means there's no point debating stats ad nauseam.

OK, Einstein, what precisely do you think this forum is for?

I always thought it was for wild speculation based on no form of evidence at all. If we are going to start using 'facts' then I'm going to start demanding sources and error bars

[EwarWoo]

If we are going to start using 'facts' then I'm going to start demanding sources and error bars

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http://www.expressandstar.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/wd2718837crash-1-jah-5.jpg

[pondus]

Against Boro we had a totally unknown player in midfield, is this player included in your gross spend?

[dww]

http://www.sosgez.co.uk/basics/100_0495s.jpg

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