Is there a risk insurance policy for transfers? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
Untold Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal
By Walter Broeckx
A much used argument with the currently missed transfer of Campbell to Arsenal is : just pay the price. Just give them what they ask. Apart from the fact that according to reports it was the player/dad/agent that didn’t turn up for a kind of final meeting with the people from Arsenal, and that is why the deal seems off for the moment. But who is telling the truth is hard to find out from where I live? It is rather a far way from Costa Rica.
But let us presume that we agreed £1M with the club and a fee with the player until they changed their mind at the last minute in the hope to get more money after the U20 world cup. And at first sight we could say that what the hell just give them £2M and some more money and the deal is done. This is a way of doing things. Other clubs do this sometimes. Fair enough for those clubs. It ends you up with paying £35M for a player that has hardly played due to injury. Or paying £50M for a player that hardly could score after the transfer. But they got their player.
But Chelsea followed this route and won nothting and Liverpool also spent a lot and didn’t even make it in to Europe. So you can spend a lot of money and no result.
But there is in my opinion still a few other things to keep in mind when doing a transfer. If Arsenal go out for a player they know him, the follow him for a while and they make up their mind of how much money he is really worth. And in reality I don’t mean the over inflated prices that are being throwing around.
So if Campbell is worth £1M for Arsenal it is an evaluation. Because in this price there is also a very big risk calculation. Because we can buy him for £1M but this is a risk. We never are sure of how he will develop. And losing £1M if a player turns out not good enough is bad. But paying £2M for the same player is twice as bad. Just imagine paying £20M.
So if we would double our initial offer every time just to make sure we get the player this would be dumb. In a way this could be done for a player who cost £1M but not for a player who you value at 10M. Then you are doing stupid business. It will be the shortest way to bankruptcy (unless of course the club is funded in the same way that Chelsea and Man City are funded).
Another thing we have to keep in mind is the question of whether the player would fit into our team. Now some may say: oh, if the player is good enough he will deliver no matter in which team he plays. But is this really a 100% guarantee? Why don’t we try to find out what happens when the best players get transferred to see if this is as certain as 1+1=2?
Ronaldo was regarded the best player in the world when he left Manchester United and went to Real Madrid. And in the two seasons at Real Madrid they have won one prize out of a possible 6. I admit one is better than none but I have a slight feeling this was not what Ronaldo dreamed of when he went to Madrid. Now in this case it is fair to say that this is not the fault of Ronaldo. No, in fact he himself has done very well. He scores a lot but the rest of the team is not good enough. Despite them all costing lots of millions. So in this case Ronaldo lived up the expectations but his club did not. So this is an example of a player who has done good himself but the team not. So pay over the odds could be the answer.
Messi. So inevitably we turn to look at the best player in the world. And this is an interesting case study in my opinion. And I will only talk about Messi the player in this article, not the ‘I want Cesc next to me in the shower boy’. Messi is probably the best player in the world. Top scorer, assists, well he does it all for Barcelona and he wins them things on his own. Okay a pinch of salt on this. No in fact he is so integrated in the Barcelona team that they have one big and well oiled machine to produce the results they want. So would Messi, the best player in the world, be capable of doing this in any team he plays? Well in fact we have a very clear answer on this: NO. No, he just can’t.
Because let us take a look at the last world cup. Argentina was considered to be one of the top favourites of the tournament. Because they had Messi. But even the best player in the world (and coached by one of the all time greatest players in football history) could not win them anything. They went home very early and not covered with glory.
And now in the Copa America playing at home everyone was thinking that with Messi surely they would win it this time. And yet again they went out and Messi once again could not lift the team. And don’t say the rest of the team is rubbish as most of them are very big names in world football.
So saying if we buy player X we will surely win is just a lie. It doesn’t work that way. If it would then Argentina should have won the world cup and the Copa America. And they clearly didn’t. They even didn’t came close. The reason is that Barcelona and Messi are playing together for many years. And they have become better with playing together all those years.
But in another team where people don’t know each other that well players could be thinking: oh, he will get us through. But when the best player doesn’t get the support he is used even he becomes a shadow of himself.
So even if we would buy Messi it would never give us a 100% certainty of winning anything. In fact this is a very good example of the fact that you just cannot take a player from one team, put him in another team and just expect things to work out for you.
Thus any transfer is a risk. And the more money you spend on a transfer, the bigger the risk as you can only spend your money once. Well, at least this is what my mother used to tell me when I was young. And now I have found out that this in fact is true.
————————
The index of recent articles, and links to the various sections of Untold can be found in the Untold Index. For Arsenal History there is (rather logically) an Arsenal History Index.
Some recent snippets…
From the series on next season’s team: Campbell on hold others pending,
From the Arsenal History site…
From the Untold Media series…
Phone hacking and football; refs and club owners
Untold Media: Launch of new media section, and we need your help