One of my favorite bloggers "Rapidhammer" was creative again today noting that the English £ has lost 30% of its value compared to the European €, and discussing the consequences (His post in German HERE).
He also refers to an interesting article by timesonline, that talks about how the reduced value of the £ has in effect increased the price of players in non £ countries, for English teams.
Example: as the value of the West Ham money decreases the quality of €-players that can be bought for a given amount of £ also decreases.
But it will also affect the prices on English players!
The football market in Europe is not totally open. Most British players seem to fancy to apply their trade in England rather than in other EU countries (not to mention other countries) but still, it will affect the price of English players.
Example: After the loss of value of the £, a German club can see it's refused €10 million bid (worth £7 million a during the summer transfer window) now being considered by the English team since it's now actually a £10million bid. A British club trying to move for the same player will most likely have to match that German bid. Hence, the price also for English players are going up for the English teams.
Now there is a economic crisis going on as well as a PL-bubble and I think it must push the "average player price" downwards as the amount of money that is available for transfers is most likely going down. But the relative change in player prices between England and €-countries is still there even if prices are going down in England.
So to sum it up: All players will be harder to afford for the English teams compared to continental teams. The price of English players will probably be affected less than players now playing in other countries.
From a West Ham point of view this seems a bit worrying since the strategy at the moment may be to invest in foreign players, funded by the sale of English.
However, I think the biggest worry is for the quality of the PL in general and (initially) the "biggest" teams in particular. Can PL teams compete with their continental counterparts when the bidding starts, and can the "big 4" afford players of Champions league Quality?
Where are the football economists when you need them?
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5 comments:
Thank you for quoting my blog. Bubbleview is one of my favourite blogs, too. I especially appreciate your comments on things going on at the boardroom and on economic topics related to West Ham United. By the way, do you speak German or even Icelandic?
I can read and understand German if spoken slowly.
Icelandic... thats harder.
At least this will affect Wenger. Maybe it already has...
I think it will affect us (West Ham) less than most of the other teams in the PL. I can't really agree that our policy is to buy foreign. I can't say that we do buy a lot of "imports"? The young one's - like Salamon which I wrote about in the article here, and other 17-year-olds - are so young that they are either free (besides the salary) or very cheap. Tristan came on a free, Lopez as well (?), Di Michele is on loan, as Ilunga. The last player who broke into the team are British: Collison. Tomkins is on his way, Sears and probably Reid and Stanislas will do it next season. So I do agree that it may affect the whole PL, but us less than others.
I agree it will affect us more than the teams hoping to buy high profile players from non-GB countries.
But since there has been so much talk about using Nanis scouting network I don't think it's way off the mark to assume that we will be looking outside the PL. Nani is hardly the expert on players in the PL is he?
EDIT:
I agree it will NOT affect us etc.
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