Michy Batshuayi (£33m, Marseille)
Sadio Mane (£30m, Southampton)
Henrikh Mkhitaryan (£30m, Borussia Dortmund)
Miralem Pjanic (€38m, AS Roma)
Renato Sanches (€35m, Benfica)
Mats Hummels (€38m, Borussia Dortmund)
Grzegorz Krychowiak (€26m, Sevilla)

These are large figures, paid by Chelsea, Liverpool, United, Juventus, Bayern, and PSG respectively. What kind of world do we live in where a 19-year Renato Sanches is worth 35m, or if you listen to Bayern, even more? Like it or not, big clubs will spend big. Manchester United have bid more than 100m on Paul Pogba, and irrelevant of if the transfer actually goes through, the fact remains that they can. Is this a problem?

Personally, I would argue that it is not. Money has always been spent by the richest clubs in the world. To be real, Sanches for 35m is not that different from Ronaldo for 17m. Pogba for 100m is not that different from Zidane (46m) in 2001. What has effectively happened is that the top players have seen their value double. This is natural. Big clubs have always outpsent small clubs, and new TV deals combined with rich owners creating a larger bidding market have caused this naturally. This can be seen as quite logical. In 2001, when Real Madrid bought Zidane for 46m, they were quite literally the only club that could have done so. Juventus could have asked for 60m and it would not have made a difference. Real would not have increased their offer because there would be no reason to aside from lining Juventus' pockets.

However, today it is different. Take Pogba. At most, in terms of ability, Pogba is worth 70m, and that is being generous. In 2001, only one club would have been able to afford that, and it would have been Real Madrid. However, if the top clubs in the world are sold on the fact that Pogba is the next great midfielder and will be for the next decade (my opinion may differ, but whatever) how many of those clubs could realistically spend 70m? I would put out a list that includes United, both Madrids, Barca, Bayern, Juventus, PSG, City, Chelsea, and half of China. All the player's agent has to do is kindle interest in more than one of these clubs and the player's value will skyrocket as a big dick contest ensues between the clubs. Eventually, as we saw with Pogba, only one club is left, and by the time United becomes the only challenger, suddenly Pogba is worth 100m.

Of course, this doesn't just happen with players like Pogba. When I first saw that Chelsea had spent 33m on Batshuayi to presumably be a second striker, if that, I was stunned. It turned out over the following days that Chelsea had to beat Crystal Palace of all people, who had tried to get the former Marseille man for 30m, and Chelsea had to outbid them. In previous years before the BPL TV deal, a club like Crystal Palace would NEVER have had 30m to spend on a player, and therefore Chelsea would have been able to comfortably buy Batshuayi for 20m or less if none of the other world powers were interested, which in this case, they weren't.

Let's look at some different numbers:

Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg (£12.8m, Southampton)
Kevin Volland (€20m, Bayer Leverkusen)
Marten de Roon (£12m, Middlesbrough)
Fernando (€14m, Spartak Moscow)
Ruben Rochina (€11m, Rubin Kazan)
Matt Ritchie (£12m, Newcastle United)
Dwight Gayle (£9m, Newcastle United)
Jordon Ibe (£15m, Bournemouth)
James Tomkins (£10m, Crystal Palace)

From a price inflation standpoint, it is these numbers that show me great concern. In what realm of possibility can Newcastle United, a team in the Championship afford to spend more than 20m on below-average BPL players? How is James Tomkins, who doesn't even start for West Ham, worth 10m to Crystal Palace? Times are changing, but why?

Much like the bidding war I explained earlier, the same holds true for these players. Premier League teams from the regulation spots up have significant amounts of money to spend, which makes them competition. As any idiot can tell you about economics, if demand does not equal supply, prices will increase. There is more demand from more teams that ever before, and they now have the fiscal ability to pull it off. Which brings me to Leicester City.

Leicester City are being called one of the biggest success stories of all time. How could a club that was so close to utter failure, turn it around and beat all the "big-spending" clubs? Most of us have deducted that it was a combination of bad form on the part of the British powers (Chelsea, United, City, Arsenal) and the smashing success of Leicester's summer signings, which included Kante, Okazaki, Huth, and Gray for a combined 20m, as well as a number of frees (Fuchs, Dyer) and the great success of Mahrez and Vardy. However, if one looks at the stats, Leicester had the best defence in the league and that allowed Ranieri to use his high-flying counter system based off of Kante's workrate, Drinkwater's passing, and further up the pitch, Mahrez and Vardy. That 20m in transfer fees (and over 200k in weekly wages just from the players Leicester brought in equaling over 10m for the entire year) was the foundation on which Leicester won the league.

The team that barely escaped relegation spent 30m, and nailed every single signing. It was enough to win them the title. As recently as three of four years ago, a team at Leicester's status would never have had 30m to spend in a single window. And if they did, there was no possibility they would win the league, so many owners simply sat on the majority of money that they had. (See: Mike Ashley).

But with Leicester, everything has changed. Nailing all your signings can win you a league. Nailing even one, such as West Ham and Payet, can get you into Europe. Every team in the BPL is trying to be Leicester, and spending up, hoping to find that one player, or group of players. Owners and executives have turned into the happy-go-lucky fans who run up and down the streets yelling "we're going to be AMAZING" whenever their team makes a signing. Hope has found its way into every BPL team.

Which of course means that everyone else is taking advantage of it, and with good reason. It was commented by an agent that clubs have one price for BPL clubs and one price for non-BPL clubs. It all has to do with what a club can spend, and as far as every club is concerned, once a British team is involved, no one else can match them. That's why it seems that BPL teams are overpaying for players, because they are. British players are even worse. Thanks to BPL rules that require 8 out of the 25 squad players to be from a part of the UK, a player such as Raheem Sterling or John Stones becomes incredibly overvalued. Instead of having a smashing foreign starting 11 (cough City cough) with English bench players, any chance at grabbing an English player that is starting 11 capable becomes priority because it frees up squad space.

However, this doesn't just affect the average teams of Europe, it affects the elite ones too. Bayern spent 35m on Sanches because they had to, due to United's interest. If United is not interested, Bayern could have probably gotten him for 25m or less. Bayern then loses out. Juventus is having the same issue, expect they are refusing to play. Selling off players for high amounts of money and buying within their league (see: Pjanic) and accepting older frees (Pirlo/Evra/Dani Alves/Marcheso etc) basically has shown that Juventus only makes a move when no other large clubs are involved, usually when accepting rejects like Morata and Pogba. PSG are playing the game, and playing it hard, but still have yet to take a major player off of the hands of a power that the power wanted to keep - and no, going full retard for David Luiz seems to be an exception, not the rule, and that's if Chelsea even wanted to keep him.

There are a couple things to take from this.

-Prices for elite players will only continue to rise as more clubs acquire big time spending power (ex; China)
-Prices for British players will become obnoxious to the point where clubs outside of England will literally not be able to afford them...some would argue that we are at that point already.
-The BPL will become much more competitive. Squad strength across the entire league has strengthened significantly since there is no competition for players from teams outside the BPL (aside for elite players).
-If no BPL team is interested in a player, that player will be sold for what amounts to potentially half of what that BPL club would've spent.
-European giants will suffer from increased competition especially if they don't hold major TV deals themselves, Bayern not as much, but Juventus and PSG mainly.

So what's your opinion on rising transfer fees? Is it bad for the BPL, Europe, smaller clubs, larger clubs? Good for the balance of the game? I'm curious to know what you guys think.

worth it:
Henrikh Mkhitaryan (£30m, Borussia Dortmund)
Miralem Pjanic (€38m, AS Roma)
Grzegorz Krychowiak (€26m, Sevilla)

Definitely NOT worth it:
Michy Batshuayi (£33m, Marseille)
Sadio Mane (£30m, Southampton)
Renato Sanches (€35m, Benfica)

ehh..we'll see:
Mats Hummels (€38m, Borussia Dortmund)

Examples of great buys (in terms of money spent and quality matching each other):
Nico Gaitan (€25, Benfica) to ATLETICO MADRID
Marc Bartra (€8m, Barcelona) to DORTMUND
Nolito (£13.5m, Celta Vigo) to CITY
Ilkay Gundogan (£20m, Borussia Dortmund) to CITY

Absolutely friggin retarded:

wherever Pelle went

whatever united will pay for pogba will not be worth it. 120m lol. 60m on a good day. trust. i've watched him play for juve...he's overhyped, he can leave for all i care. mind you he plays for my club. All you bandwagon pogba fans who haven't watched him play 90 minutes...you don't know what you're talking about. I guess United screwed pogba over a couple of years ago, so pogba will screw united back. karma. $$$

^ agree about batshuayi and sanches but mane is worth 30m imo

Just for information, Sanches deal totalling €80 million, with the additional €45 million depending on objectives.

Why? Well... Inflation. Supply and demand + new era of money football (Sponsors going crazy and sales only getting higher give teams a bigger acquisition power).

Is it a problem. Well it is for most of the teams in the world that are not amongst the top 10. They will be receiving more money out of their players but we would never again see smaller teams winning big trophies. And personally I dont like teams buying so much, as a matter of fact I hate it but now United became another RM buying anything they can.

How has nobody talked about Pogba yet? 120 million is what a team is worth. That right there is going to break the market. Now every slightly decent player that is still young wont go for less than 30m and that would just make the gap between big clubs and smaller clubs way wider. What happened with that not so long ago era where teams bought young talent for 15m and then had them become world class players? That is how I've always liked football to be. Creating and not Buying. Imagine investing 120m in the youth academy or buying 4-5 young talents..

But well... lets just keep watching football shall we? After one of the worst seasons Ive ever seen in general. (would have been the worst by far if it wasn't for Leicester)

...and the 2001 Zidane was better than what Pogba is now.

@Eden

The actual worth of the player in totally relative depending on who is buying them. Even adjusted for inflation and money in the game, Zidane was only worth 46m because Real was the only club that could pay that. No one is saying Pogba is worth 100m, I'd be surprised if he's worth half that.

I feel like I write these in-depth researched threads and no one actually reads them lol

Keep it simple, i skip over a lot of comments/threads because they're too long/uninteresting. Put some main points down and let people discuss or go on different tangents. Staying on topic is boring especially since no one is actually required to

I did summarize it at the end. Guess that wasn't enough though.

@Sunflash Next time, why not simply put a "in summary" section and it will be easier for people to see it. Other than that, I agree with most of what you said. I believe the main problem is that English team will be very competitive in their own league but that they will be a bigger wall between their team and other european giant who might just be able to get better talent for less. I don't think the current price in England are helping their teams on the european stage since they are already exhausted playing though game against even the weakest of team in their own league. What you think Sun? :(

Well, if you look at money and players value for value, England should be wiping the floor in Europe. This upcoming season should tell us a lot, but in reality I can't see much changing. Just because you have money, and you're forced to spend large amounts of it to get the players you want, doesn't mean that you're better than Europe.

^I agree

One word speculation.

Inflation of the currencies, that's why.

@tdot

That is a gross over simplification and factually incorrect. The British Pound crashed spectacularly after Brexit, meaning that British money is worth less, and yet they will still spend more on players than last season.

When you have cash machines like City, United And PSG able to pay any amount to attract a player who is wanted in the market, They must overpay. Pogba while in talks with Barca was costing 80m both Juve And Barca reached agreement but the player salary was going to cause problems to Barca wages hierarchy, unthinkable for a youngster to be paid more than Busquets/Iniesta.
Problem is that when the player doesnt go to his first choice club, Juve became in a strong position to negotiate. While for the case of first choice clubs transfers like Hummells to Bayern or Lewa, the price isnt high because the buying team is in strong position.
The years of contracts has become lately not important because any club can renew contract just before selling the player.
If the club want to sell or not is also important, when you put a player on the market is different to being Hunted by the Big guns to loose a gem.
For youngsters like Renato or Dybala, these players have high chances to become top class so the owner club speculate on the talent, They sold him ar a high price speculating on thefuture progression.

Its all about who is buying, if a player is targeted by many cash machines, the preference of the player who can reach an agreement with a club before even négociations begin.

Speculation.

@ Sunflash

I can already tell you have no idea what you are talking about.

Inflation is caused by the printing of new money. The British central bank is constantly printing new money to fund government projects. When new money is printed, there is more money in circulation, therefore prices go up. This is just basic Supply-Demand principles. For example, today, it costs more money to buy a chocolate bar than it did many years ago, simply because there is more money in circulation. Also today, the prices of almost everything are slowly going up and readjusting for the inflation rate.

The British Pound crashed due to speculation in the markets over Brexit, and solely for that reason, and it will be restored very soon again as markets are driven by cycles of emotion.

Maybe you should take a look at how much more money is in circulation today than a few years ago, you'd be stunned.

Here is a article I found after a quick google search, and you can find many more from using google.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/484725/Just-how-much-money-has-the-Bank-of-England-printed-Explained-with-DRIFTWOOD

In the same way, prices for players are readjusted for the inflation rate and also jumps higher due to competition to actually bid for and get the player. You asked why prices for players are rising, and that is the reason.

Sigh.

First off, that article you found was the first result on google on this topic, great research. It's from two years ago, and directly refers to how the United States and Britain tried to buy their way out of the 2008 economic recession. Here is a link that is far more relevant to what you're talking about:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-15198789

Because of sustainable quantitative easing, which has been the norm over the past year in all of Europe, not just Britain, you should have no concerns about out of control inflation. Cool?

Now, since we have established that the increase in physical money from last year to this year is sustainable and NOT causing large amounts of inflation, we can see that the lowered value of the UK Pound has a large effect on just how much clubs are worth. Assuming, Manchester United for example, neither gained nor lost money from all sources, they would be worth LESS today than they were last season, because the inflation rate did not keep up with the crash in the UK Pound value.

So, that rules out inflation. The obvious answer, and correct one, as to why players are now worth more is as I stated in my original post in this thread, as TV deals and new money comes into the league, the clubs enter a bidding war with each other, and the value of players increase due to this demand.

Hopefully that answers any questions you may have had.

@ SunFlash

Okay I will try to do this point by point.

First off, that article you found was the first result on google on this topic, great research. It's from two years ago, and directly refers to how the United States and Britain tried to buy their way out of the 2008 economic recession. Here is a link that is far more relevant to what you're talking about:

Yes I know what I found, but I have done my research long time ago. But are you seriously denying that the increase in the money supply (which central banks have sole authority over) does not also increase the amount of money you will require to purchase something? This is a fact. I know it talks about the 2008 recession, but it is the norm for every recession, and for every time the government runs out of money, which is every year. They increase it by a large amount every year, pumping brand new billions into the economy. The change in prices is not an immediate affect, as it takes a little time for it to properly circulate. The link you provided seems to leave out what QE (quantitative easing) does to the prices in the economy, and for obvious reasons.

Because of sustainable quantitative easing, which has been the norm over the past year in all of Europe, not just Britain, you should have no concerns about out of control inflation. Cool?

Quantitative easing is just what it's called in order to impress people who don't understand banking practices. It's not just in all of Europe, it is ravaging in North America and probably all over the world. What it really is, is pumping brand new money created out of nothing into the system which someone has to pay interest for (money is not loaned out for free). For the top bankers it is very sustainable, for us common people it is not.

Now, since we have established that the increase in physical money from last year to this year is sustainable and NOT causing large amounts of inflation, we can see that the lowered value of the UK Pound has a large effect on just how much clubs are worth.

First of all, we have not established that. The increase in physical money from last year is happening every year, plus a VAST amount during recessions, panics, etc. It is absolutely NOT sustainable. You don't understand, this money is borrowed. Our entire monetary system is based on debt. Every dollar, pound, euro in circulation is based off the total national debt, created out of nothing for the purpose of lending. Every dollar you own right now, someone owes it. If every debt were to be paid back, there would be no money left in circulation, it would vanish and disappear into thin air. If you think this is not causing large inflation, I wonder how you will feel when the entire monetary system is based on the deliberate inflation of the currency.

Assuming, Manchester United for example, neither gained nor lost money from all sources, they would be worth LESS today than they were last season, because the inflation rate did not keep up with the crash in the UK Pound value.

The statement "because the inflation rate did not keep up with the crash in the UK Pound value" made no sense. However, if Manchester United did not gain or lose money in a year, they would be worth less not because of what you said, but because investors do not invest money into something that does not make money, therefore the price goes down. This was not a good example, and quite and irrelevant one as well.

So, that rules out inflation.
Lol. A chocolate bar, or a car, or a house, was bought with a lot less money many years ago compared with today. The reason being is that there is more money in circulation, caused by inflation (inflation as defined in the first sentence of my previous post), which causes prices to go up overtime. This is the same with players.

The obvious answer, and correct one, as to why players are now worth more is as I stated in my original post in this thread, as TV deals and new money comes into the league, the clubs enter a bidding war with each other, and the value of players increase due to this demand.

Where do you think that new money comes from? There is trillions in dollars in circulation today, compared with only billions 60-70 years ago (American at least, same concept applies to Europe but smaller numbers). Clubs were always entering bidding wars, but your statement sounds like this is something new to you. Bidding wars cause a jump in price as I stated in my previous post. But you are completely wrong because what we see is the general rise of the price of players, and not just a one-two players. Bidding wars only affect the price of one player. It is much deeper than bidding wars.

Hopefully that answers any questions you may have had.

Trust me I would never ask you any question.

Actually I agree with tdot, but bidding wars are as deep as the inflation. Didnt talkrd about inflation because it concerns everything not only Football. And many MANY players are sold with a fair price, in France for instance or Germany, we do not witness any crazyness in the market.
Much more money outside Football buisness were injected, oil money, gas money.... You can only see crazy wages And prices concerning the big guns, a player can be compared to an art paint, some players cant be owned by small teams because They are peecious to the game, And the fight for them can reach a fight for a Picasso pr à Van Gogh, others are just priceless. But you need inequity to reach these situations.
Pogba can cost 150m doesnt mean he worth it, if both Manchester clubs enter à one player fight, his worth sportively or price do not impact the final cost, clubs ego, the image They want to show on the market, the fact both clubs are economical rivals...
Bidding wars isnt secondary, inflation is général.

@tiki

Inflation does concern everything not only Football, that is one thing I was trying to say. But the bidding wars aren't deeper than inflation, it only adds to the price of specific players. Sunflash's original post was about the general rise in the price of players, which is what we see, and it has to do a lot more with inflation than bidding. Every bid requires a starting price, you only add what you think will be worth its market value in the end.