It’s that time of year again when CIES publishes one of my favorite stats, the Net Transfer Spending Per Club. After watching one of the more exciting games of the season the other day (Bournemouth FC v Liverpool FC) I was impressed with the confident high energy soccer Bournemouth played. I was also impressed by the fact that I was not very familiar with anyone on the team and that their pre transfer window wage spend was one of the lowest in the EPL. As I looked over the data on the 100 clubs on the CIES Table I felt compelled to create a little table of my own, the frequent allegation that wage spend to table rank is directly correlated being at the front of my mind. Growing up in the Boston area, a sore subject for fans of the pre-free agency Red Sox/Celtics/Bruins/Patriots in the shadow of big money/market NY.
Watching Bournemouth causing some chaos for the best in class Liverpool back line had me thinking, who do these guys think they are? Had an inches offside on an otherwise butter knife incision of the Liverpool critical area with Virgil on his heels and a suspect PK to the good of the Never Walk Alone men, a team that had just dispelled City and Arsenal could have had the trifecta against the best team in the world.
So what? you may ask!
Well, I ranked the numbers from the CIES Net Transfer Market Wage Table, the total wage spend before the season started according to capology and the Premiere League table and subtracted the Total Net Wage rank number for each team from their corresponding EPL table rank to arrive at what i now unabashedly call THE FLYNNDEX. Yes, there are many, many other factors involved in the total club salary but nevertheless what the table reveals is interesting.
The higher the negative number the better. The last column shows us that Newcastle, Liverpool and Arsenal are the 1,2 and 3 teams getting the best return in terms of table standing for their money. Not that they spent the most to buy a place at the top of the table, that they spent the relative least! The table also shows that money can in fact buy you a good shot at relegation with Ipswich Town and Southampton(and in the case of City a whole lot of legal hassles).
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