Statement signings dominate shallow transfer market

THERE may be almost a month remaining in the English Premier League transfer window, but already there are trends emerging.

Suarez Fabregas

THERE may be almost a month to go in the transfer window, but already there are trends emerging, from the decisions of Edinson Cavani and Falcao to move to France's nouveaux riches to the unexpected effects of Financial Fair Play. At times, in the midst of the sagas involving Luis Suarez, Cesc Fabregas, Wayne Rooney and Gareth Bale, it may appear as though nothing is happening. But even that teaches us something.

Making a statement

JOSE Mourinho articulated it best when he admitted Chelsea's transfer policy this year effectively amounted to Rooney or bust. He said the Manchester United striker was his only target.

Arsenal is in much the same position, of course, with Suarez, and United itself in its pursuit of Fabregas, although both can take solace that their obsession is not as expensive as Real Madrid's desire to sign Bale.

This has been the year of the statement signing. Clubs are under pressure to deliver a marquee name, are prepared to put all other plans on hold to bring it to fruition and, crucially, they are ready and able to pay whatever price is necessary to do so.

Their reasons vary: Real needs a big name to counter Barcelona's capture of Brazil's next big thing Neymar, United wants to provide David Moyes, the man with the toughest job in football, with a boost. What unites them all is that the pool of potential high-calibre recruits is shallow.

That drives up their price, and their value, and has a knock-on effect lower down.

Suffering of the masses

SUCH concerns, of course, matter only at the top end of the market. It would be easy to look at the headline figures of how much the Premier League has spent so far - just shy of £400 million ($687.3m) - or at the lavish outlay of the two French parvenus and assume that football is as detached as ever from the brutal financial reality of real life in post-credit crunch Europe.

That is not true. Yes, the game's elite are blissfully unaffected, throwing money around seemingly with little regard for UEFA's much-vaunted Financial Fair Play initiatives, but elsewhere, frugality is the watchword. In France, the Ligue 1 clubs have spent £160m this year. Eliminate the outliers at Paris-Saint Germain and Monaco, though, and the other 18 sides are actually in profit.

It is the same in Italy, once Napoli is removed, while Spain's clubs have sold £120m worth of players more than they have bought. The vast majority of teams are asset-stripping to survive.

The only exception is the Premier League, where purchases outstrip sales by some £300m. That may well be because of the weight of imports: of the 88 players bought by England's top-flight clubs this year, 66 are not British, the vast majority of whom are new to these shores. Money is pouring out of the league.

A star is waning

CONTRARY to popular perception, for all the money that has washed through the English game since the advent of the Premier League, the division's big beasts have rarely been able to attract the continent's biggest stars.

In more than two decades of trawling Europe for talent, only a handful of players brought to England could genuinely have been classified as superstars at the time of their arrival. The vast majority have come either as young prodigies - Cristiano Ronaldo or Fernando Torres - as players deemed surplus to requirements elsewhere, such as Thierry Henry, or from lesser leagues.

Nonetheless, this year has felt somehow different. The two world-class targets identified by Premier League sides as priority recruits, Cavani and Falcao, both elected to move to France, and even those players from the tier below - such as Gonzalo Higuain and Thiago - chose other destinations.

That could yet change, if Manchester United signs Fabregas, say, but as things stand, England is not a place where the best come so much as a place where they grow.

A new equality

THE fear, towards the end of last season, was that the combined effects of the Premier League's new television deal, worth £5.5 billion over three years, and UEFA's FFP initiative, was that in England and elsewhere, the status quo would effectively be cast in stone. The strong would remain strong and the weak would be nowhere.

It has not quite worked out like that. With the elite distracted by their desire to appease fans and marketing departments alike with a big-name signing, clubs such as Swansea City, Norwich City and Southampton have used the £25m or so boost they have received from the TV deal to strengthen their resources. That money has proved rather more useful to them than the £35m increase a larger side might hope to glean, simply because it represents a greater proportion of their finances.

They have spent wisely, too, Norwich and Swansea making use of underpriced markets in The Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, picking up Leroy Fer, Ricky van Wolfswinkel and Jordi Amat. That suggests teams lower down are scouting better and farther. Perhaps the status quo is not as safe as it seemed.

Faster is better

ARSENAL fans may be increasingly concerned by the side's trophy drought, but they are not so desperate for silverware that they booed their side off at half-time during a friendly with Napoli on Saturday because they thought their chance of winning the Emirates Cup was gone.

No, the reaction from the crowd was the mounting hysteria of the transfer window made flesh: with a month remaining, so unsettled have they been by Arsenal's (admittedly customary) inertia that already frustrations are threatening to boil over.

Sadly for Arsene Wenger and his peers, it is not a phenomenon unique to North London. It is ironic that, at a time when clubs are increasingly happy to wait to make the right signing, their fans are more impatient than ever.

Perhaps it is the sight of Manchester City, PSG and Monaco going about their business quickly and efficiently, while the Rooney, Bale, Fabregas and Suarez sagas drag on. Perhaps it is the rise of social media and the 24-hour news cycle. Perhaps it is a wider social trend, as Wenger believes, related to a culture that moves at frenetic pace, day and night, where change is constant.

Whatever the reason, it has lent the transfer window a particularly frenzied air, where Manchester United, the champion, is said to be in crisis because it had not signed anyone in July.

The Times