Clubs investing in the transfer market make managers pay for poor short-term results

The Weekend Dossier: Recruiting players of ‘potential’ carries many risks as Rodgers and Sherwood know

Tottenham Hotspur did not make their money back on Adel Taarabt (Getty)

Modern elite footballers are now wealthy beyond the imagination of those predecessors who went to court, like George Eastham and Jean-Marc Bosman, or threatened to lead a strike, like Jimmy Hill, for employment rights. Yet in some ways they remain the chattels of club owners – at least in the latter’s minds.

How else to explain a core strand in the transfer policy of several Premier League clubs: to buy players as if they were investments, like stocks and shares, fine wine or modern art, in the belief they will increase in value and can then be sold at a profit?

There is nothing new in sniffing out a bargain. Managers have long scoured the lower divisions, even dipping into non-league, and more recently have sought value across Europe and beyond. They, though, were doing so to maximise, or eke out, a transfer budget set by the club owner. Now it is at the latter’s behest the scouts clock up the air miles, delving into France’s Ligue 1, sifting through the Dutch Eredivisie, or examining the teamsheets of La Liga’s lesser lights.

The ambition is twofold. Stock the team, or fill out the squad, on the cheap, then turn a tidy profit when the unknown foreigner becomes a Premier League star. Can they find the next Wilfried Bony, signed for £12m from Vitesse Arnhem, then sold, 18 months and 34 Swansea goals later, for £25m? Or another Christian Benteke, whose value more than trebled in three years, earning Aston Villa a £25.5m profit on the recruit from Genk?

For every Bony and Benteke, however, there is a Ricky van Wolfswinkel or Aleksandar Tonev, discovering that it is not as easy to score goals in England’s helter-skelter Premier League as they hoped.

There is another problem, which does not apply when investing in rare stamps or vintage cars. Recruiting players of potential carries an added risk – the team they are joining has to perform in the here and now. Managers at clubs with a long-term vision, like Arsène Wenger at Arsenal, can build for the future, taking a holistic interest in the club and its players. Most cannot afford to do that. Come the opening of the January transfer window Sam Allardyce will be buying experienced pros to keep Sunderland up, players who will help him get a result the following Saturday, rather than ones who will be peaking in 2020.

It would be stretching a point to suggest there has been any pattern to Sunderland’s transfer buying in recent years, hardly surprising given the turnover of managers and technical directors, but there has been at the other two clubs to have changed their manager this season.

Both Liverpool, since the takeover by the Fenway Sports Group, and Aston Villa, since Randy Lerner reined in his ambition in 2010, have viewed the transfer market as might an investor the Financial Times, or a gambler the Racing Post. All clubs and managers look for value, and many take a punt on an overseas rookie of promise, but Liverpool and Villa have been among a quintet who have specialised in buying young, foreign players with no previous experience in England, costing less than £12m. Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton are the others.

They have not restricted themselves to such transfers. They might buy a young Englishman, like Newcastle’s acquisition of Jamaal Lascelles or Southampton’s capture of Ryan Bertrand, or splash out on proven ability, as Liverpool did with Benteke this summer, or Tottenham with Toby Alderweireld. But more than most clubs they have sought to mine a seam of cross-Channel talent, hoping to unearth a gem.

It can work. Besides Benteke and Bony there have been Dejan Lovren (when bought by Saints), Philippe Coutinho and Christian Eriksen. The latter two have not been sold on – at bigger clubs, like Liverpool and Tottenham, the policy is not just about capitalising on investments though if the price is right those players would be sold just as Luis Suarez and Gareth Bale were.

However, there have been a lot of duds. Tottenham and Liverpool somehow managed to get their money back on Benjamin Stambouli and Oussam Assaidi, but not on Vlad Chriches and Adel Taarabt, Iago Aspas and Sebastian Coates. Newcastle did not take too much of a hit on Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, but must regret buying Hatem Ben Arfa. Southampton and Villa might argue the rapid depreciation of Vegard Forren and Emmanuel Mayuka, Yacouba Sylla and Aleksandar Tonev, was acceptable, given the vagaries of form, fitness and the market. But these are all among a raft of players to have dropped in price, or simply stagnated on the bench.

And some poor sod has the job of moulding all these misfits into a team that will win enough matches to keep him in a job. Brendan Rodgers and Tim Sherwood are just the latest to have failed, joining a list that includes Paul Lambert, Harry Redknapp, Andre Villas-Boas, Nigel Adkins and John Carver. Rodgers and Sherwood were both signed in part because of their ability to develop young players, but despite the obvious reality that such work takes time they were still dispensed with when results went awry. Many fans will argue their exits were necessary given those results, but the problems go far beyond the men in the dugout.

Of these five teams only Southampton could be said to have improved in this period, and even their recruitment team have not got it right all the time. Victor Wanyama and Saido Mané could realise profits akin to those generated by Morgan Schneiderlin and Lovren, but Saints will do well to get their money back on Florin Gardos and Gaston Ramirez.

For the others this transfer policy is proving no more successful on the pitch than on the balance sheet. Liverpool and Tottenham continue to haunt the palatial steps of the Champions League, occasionally getting a foot in the door only to be swiftly expelled; Villa and Newcastle flirt ever more precariously with relegation.

Perhaps every investment transfer should carry a warning akin to the one that accompanies the sale of stocks and shares: the value of footballers can go down as well as up, and so can the fortunes of their football teams.