Chelsea are most glaringly ridiculous example of transfer excess | OneFootball

Do you ever stop to think what’s it all for? Not existentially – the eternal mystery of the pointlessness of existence has haunted us for as long as we’ve been conscious; we come and go in a wink of the cosmic eye, that’s as much as we know.

No, I mean all the money spent on transfers. What’s that all about? What is the point?

Take Chelsea and their £350m spent this window. An incomprehensible amount of money and in return for what? A 3-0 spanking by Brentford who spent about £100m? What has that £250m difference achieved? Given its obvious failure to make the team better, which itself still wouldn’t justify it, why bother? You might as well donate all that money to Chelsea Food Bank.

I don’t say this out of some desire to appear worthy; it’s just a practical choice which would help so many people who are struggling. Football is quick to talk about ‘generational wealth’ when players go to Saudi for the money, but less keen when a club’s money could be generational wealth for society. After all, it must be surplus to requirements or a debt they’re happy to incur because this is money largely just wasted, as the Brentford result proved. Why not put it to a better use? Too altruistic? Of course it is. That’s how mad this situation is. Too horrible to be kind.

I do realise this kind of wider contextual talk makes some hot under the collar but football is for us, the community, so should we not have a view? Should we not introduce the real world into football? This isn’t a business investing in new machinery or using capital to expand the company and employ more people. Yes, the players are seen as assets that can render profit, I’ve no doubt that’s how they’re viewed, but that isn’t a football club, that’s the politics of exploitation. That is seeing actual human beings as profitable or disposable assets.

It’s such an extreme amount that surely we should at least pause to think about the wider consequences and implications. Todd Boehly has gone after his period of mockery, ignominy and rank stupidity but his removal hasn’t resulted in different economics. The idiot wind still blows through the boardroom. It is puzzling how it’s even allowed but more puzzling still are the fans who’ll demand more be spent on more players in January, their thirst unquenched by the £350m. It never is. These people are forever dissatisfied. Spending their only solution to every problem.

Chelsea may be the most glaringly ridiculous example but it’s the same to some degree at most big clubs, frequently buying players who make little difference or whose form could be replicated by a player already at the club. There are only four trophies to win; it’s not likely to be your club. It’s rarely going to pay off.

Obviously some players make a profound difference to a team. They are still ridiculously expensive but at least you can see the point if it makes the team successful. But what percentage do that? A far greater percentage cost millions but only play a handful or no games before moving on after a season or two, often while fans have barely even heard of them. That or they play and make little difference.

Net spends of £200m are not unusual. I ask again, what is it all for and why? It’s bonkers. Imagine spending that sort of money on what is essentially a gamble – a researched gamble maybe, but still a gamble. And if you finish 10th instead of 14th because of the signings, they were pointless because both positions are effectively the same, bar a few million quid.

Almost no Premier League team operates completely debt-free and it’s no surprise. The outstanding transfer payments alone stand at two billion. Why do owners do this? What have they got to gain? Even the fleeting prestige of a title win soon evaporates but for most, success is even less definable. It makes no sense to throw their money away because they’re up to their eyes in debt and even if they secure a title, that will barely alleviate the pressure for long and lead to more demands for ever higher-value players. It feels like a one-way ticket to failure.

Once you think about it, it’s not just what this frittered away money could achieve elsewhere, it’s that they’re risking the viability of the actual club. It hasn’t happened yet but it’s never been nearer. Manchester United, led by the out-of-touch, selfish, stupid gobsh*te Jim Radcliffe, has over £700million in gross financial debt after such an idiot spending policy. What did/do they hope to achieve? Was being a stable, reliable community asset not good enough for them or for any club? Where does it end? Even a title win wouldn’t really dent the 700 million. This is a forever debt.

Until they stop buying players and putting them on huge contracts and then actually win, they’ll never get back to zero. But they’re addicted now and it’s hard to stop this binging now they’ve had a taste.

Because as much as a lot of owners like to treat the club as a proper business, they’re never quite like a regular business are they? I’ve been in business since 1985 and nobody gave me money just for existing (except during Covid), which is effectively what happens in the Premier League. And a football club has a greater societal and civic impact on a town than a branch of Primark say. They are a cultural hub.

There’s no sign of progressive thought or understanding of any reason not to behave like this. Rather, some clubs and fans revel in the glory of the excess. Or worse, normalise it. But it’s never enough, never, ever enough. Just another hit on football’s crack pipe for them.

Transfers have always attracted big money, or relatively big for the time. Alf Common became football’s first £1,000 player when Middlesbrough bought him from Sunderland in February 1905. You know how much that’d be today? When compared to average earnings or GDP per capita growth, the spending of £1,000 in 1905 was the equivalent of over £1.2 million today in terms of relative economic status. And Enzo Fernandez is no Alf Common. So it was big but nothing like the hyper-inflation they indulge in now. When Cloughie bought Trevor Francis for one million, that’s only seven million quid in today’s money. And Enzo Fernandez is no Trevor Francis.

If a club doesn’t spend a lot of money, they get accused of lacking ambition. And if they do spend, even more players are demanded because the last lot probably hasn’t made enough difference to their position because all 19 other teams have spent millions too. On and on it goes.

Remember, it wasn’t always like this. It’s not better because it is, it doesn’t have to be and most of football still isn’t. The Premier League drinks from a different, poisoned well.

This sky-high spend rarely seems to be seriously questioned, apart from eliciting a resigned shrug, so on they roll, driving blind to utopia, and their GPS says they’ll be arriving soon. They are captains of the old order clinging to the reins, assuring us these aches inside are only growing pains.