The transfer window is a open and its a time for teams to strengthen and/or improve squad depth. In recent times, a lot of English teams have adopted a culture of investing large sums on recruiting players, the fans s
eem to love it as it is often
translated to be a signal of a team's intent on landing major honours. But how true is this? Does outspending your rivals guarantee a team success and in this case, success means winning the title as it seems to be the only one that matters.
With the aid of data gotten from the Transfer Market and comparing it to league winners and runners up from the 2000/2001 to 2016/2017. Here's the result below:
From the table, we can deduce certain facts about spending big;
First of all, lets start from the very obvious, outspending your rivals doesn’t guarantee immediate success as we can see from the table that in the past 17 seasons, only three times has the highest spender actually gone on to win the league, with Chelsea claiming two of those. Not only that but the highest spenders in the past 17 seasons have also only finished as runner up in three separate seasons as well. With the current inflation in the market in recent times, clubs and fans alike don’t have the patience to wait for players to come good, so immediate success is often expected from players that cost so much and this leads to my second point.
In the 17 seasons documented, the Chavs and the Citizens have been the two teams that have frequently spent large sums, mostly due to their super wealthy owners that brought them out of relative obscurity and turned them to European power houses by injecting large swaths of money to bring in quality players that helped them close the gap between themselves and the traditional sides like Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool. Out of the 17 seasons accounted for, Chelsea and Manchester City have been the highest spenders 7 and 5 times respectively, with Chelsea winning 5 league titles in that period while City have won 2. The other 10 are shared rather unevenly between United, Arsenal and the Fairy tale foxes with 7, 2 and 1 respectively.
So we can deduce that outspending your rival for just one season will almost certainly not lead to winning the title as we can see from Spurs and Arsenal but doing so on a consistent basis will eventually bring the goods in, as evident from Chelsea and Manchester City who have won 7 of the last 17 league titles between them. While Manchester United enjoyed a lot of Success under Fergie without having to spend so much, being crowned champions 7 times, Arsenal have only been successful twice in this period but not in recent times as the new stadium took its toll on them, the shackles are slowly coming off at the Emirates and will certainly start competing financially with the big spenders.
In conclusion, the simple notion that spending a lot of money is all that matters is most likely wrong but it is clear to see that in recent times, there’s been a shift from the norms of the old days of simply playing football to the sport being a global brand with so much more at stake, higher rewards, therefore it is imperative that a team that wants to challenge for the title constantly invest in improving its squad.
eem to love it as it is often
translated to be a signal of a team's intent on landing major honours. But how true is this? Does outspending your rivals guarantee a team success and in this case, success means winning the title as it seems to be the only one that matters.
With the aid of data gotten from the Transfer Market and comparing it to league winners and runners up from the 2000/2001 to 2016/2017. Here's the result below:
From the table, we can deduce certain facts about spending big;
First of all, lets start from the very obvious, outspending your rivals doesn’t guarantee immediate success as we can see from the table that in the past 17 seasons, only three times has the highest spender actually gone on to win the league, with Chelsea claiming two of those. Not only that but the highest spenders in the past 17 seasons have also only finished as runner up in three separate seasons as well. With the current inflation in the market in recent times, clubs and fans alike don’t have the patience to wait for players to come good, so immediate success is often expected from players that cost so much and this leads to my second point.
In the 17 seasons documented, the Chavs and the Citizens have been the two teams that have frequently spent large sums, mostly due to their super wealthy owners that brought them out of relative obscurity and turned them to European power houses by injecting large swaths of money to bring in quality players that helped them close the gap between themselves and the traditional sides like Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool. Out of the 17 seasons accounted for, Chelsea and Manchester City have been the highest spenders 7 and 5 times respectively, with Chelsea winning 5 league titles in that period while City have won 2. The other 10 are shared rather unevenly between United, Arsenal and the Fairy tale foxes with 7, 2 and 1 respectively.
So we can deduce that outspending your rival for just one season will almost certainly not lead to winning the title as we can see from Spurs and Arsenal but doing so on a consistent basis will eventually bring the goods in, as evident from Chelsea and Manchester City who have won 7 of the last 17 league titles between them. While Manchester United enjoyed a lot of Success under Fergie without having to spend so much, being crowned champions 7 times, Arsenal have only been successful twice in this period but not in recent times as the new stadium took its toll on them, the shackles are slowly coming off at the Emirates and will certainly start competing financially with the big spenders.
In conclusion, the simple notion that spending a lot of money is all that matters is most likely wrong but it is clear to see that in recent times, there’s been a shift from the norms of the old days of simply playing football to the sport being a global brand with so much more at stake, higher rewards, therefore it is imperative that a team that wants to challenge for the title constantly invest in improving its squad.
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