"Correct" transfer fees

OverratedOpinion

Full Member
Joined
Sep 4, 2017
Messages
8,821
I feel like every time a player is discussed they will either be deemed a bargain or a rip off/flop.

I was trying to think, who are some recent transfers that you wouldn't say either about. A £30 million signing that performed exactly as you'd expect them to for that fee.

Would be interesting and a good insight to what we tend to expect for certain transfer fees.

De Ligt to us was the first one that popped to mind but can also imagine people disagreeing quite strongly.
 
Joelinton looked like the biggest flop in Newcastle's history at 40m. Now that probably seems about right.
 
Most players in the £30-40m category are usually just deemed good normal transfers, unless they actually turn into stars. Jackson for £32m is a good example I think.
 
De Ligt £38M and Mazraoui £17M were deals that struck me as being very normal and sensible.
 
Rio Ferdinand for a then £29m. At the time it was perceived as being expensive given we were breaking the British transfer record for a CB, but in hindsight it made sense that Ferdinand cost that much. He needed to be one of the Europe's best CBs to justify it, and he ultimately was.
 
When you bought Amad it was quite a high fee despite him being highly rated, no? Feels like it's been a couple of years but now he's showing it was worth that.
 
SilentWitness said:
When you bought Amad it was quite a high fee despite him being highly rated, no? Feels like it's been a couple of years but now he's showing it was worth that.
Click to expand...

Was going to be my shout. About the right price for the risk and the fact he wasn’t usable straight away.

————

De Ligt feels like he cost about the right amount.
 
I thought this thread was how the press reports United's transfers. It seems to me that the press always add a few million to the price we pay or claim the figure is in pounds , when it's in Euros. Or take a few million off the fee of any player we sell.
 
Someone like Malacia was the right type of fee. Was it £14M or something like that? Seems appropriate for a young player from a smaller league. Fine to take a shot on a squad player at that price.
 
Gareth Barry joined Man City in 2009 for £12 million at the beginning of their sportswashing era.

A normal British player for a normal British fee with the most generic British name ever who stayed for five years, playing a bit-part role in City winning a PL title and FA Cup in his time there, before leaving for a normal club (Everton).
 
Irrational. said:
Gareth Barry joined Man City in 2009 for £12 million at the beginning of their sportswashing era.

A normal British player for a normal British fee with the most generic British name ever who stayed for five years, playing a bit-part role in City winning a PL title and FA Cup in his time there, before leaving for a normal club (Everton).
Click to expand...
In the same window they spent twice as much on Joleon Lescott who can be said to have achieved all the same things. This proves that having an extra syllable in your name is worth about £12m.
 
SilentWitness said:
When you bought Amad it was quite a high fee despite him being highly rated, no? Feels like it's been a couple of years but now he's showing it was worth that.
Click to expand...
Amad is a weird one as it would have been a transfer people would have taken the piss out of us for up until lately. Always using the full 34m fee rather than the 17m one. Clearly be seen now as a very good deal but it's taken time
 
SilentWitness said:
When you bought Amad it was quite a high fee despite him being highly rated, no? Feels like it's been a couple of years but now he's showing it was worth that.
Click to expand...
I think the fee was 21m euros with bonuses (that were ambitious if I'm not mistaken), taking the total amount to 37m euros.
 
  • Appropriate transfer fee: Diogo Dalot to Manchester United for €20 million or thereabouts. For that type of outlay, on average, at a major club, you're banking on potential but also expecting to be somewhat underwhelmed (with ebbs and flows in terms of consistency, maybe some outperformance followed by regression to the mean), and he has been exactly that for the most part.
  • Rip offs: “I have nothing to say.”
  • Bargain: will cheat and select Alejandro Garnacho for this category. We signed him for peanuts for the youth team, he has more that repaid the outlay (I'd say him winning the Youth Cup was the tipping point and eveything since has been a bonus), and we could make a significant profit by selling him. One of the best signings of the post-Fergie era all things considered, no doubt about that.

  • Appropriate transfer fee: Jules Koundé to Barcelona for €48 million. For that type of outlay, you would be expect him to be largely above-average to good but not truly remarkable at a major club, and he has been exactly that. Given the chance, they would probably still choose to fork out €40-50 million for him, but maybe not much more.
  • Rip offs, to varying degrees: Philippe Coutinho, Ousmane Dembélé or Antoine Griezmann to Barcelona for upwards of €100 million. For that type of outlay, you would've expected them to be genuine difference-makers for teams that compete on all fronts, and none of them reached that level at the club. If they'd known what we were getting, there's no way they would've spent that much.
  • Bargain: Pedri to Barcelona for €23 million. Some fitness issues, but he's been one of the leading lights of their new generation, a difference-maker on a semi-regular basis and still has a ways to go (with the likes of Yamal and Cubarsí). If they'd known what we were getting, they would've been perfectly content spending 3 times as much, if not more, on the lad.
 
Steve Bruce said:
It wasn't a steal. It was 75m and Liverpool got a 75m CB. The fee was the right price for what he is.
Click to expand...

Agree. Liverpool paid a record amount and got (one of) the best. Just like how we did that in the past with Rio. It is what you want to see as a fan of the club buying the player.

Something you dont really want to see is breaking that Virgil van Dijk record and getting Harry Maguire.... He is okay and all but not exactly record breaking material.
 
Malen for about 20m is right. A few don't rate him but he's still someone in his mid 20s who hit double figures for Dortmund last season and started for Holland in the summer so not top tier obviously but can be more than useful for us in basketball type prem games.
 
Excluding the past two summers since it takes time to work out whether someone was worth the price, probably Martinez at £50m was the last one. Maybe overpaid by £10m but it's debatable and close enough. Dalot at just under £20m before that in 2018 is about right too. Didn't see many bargains, we're very skewed to overpaying.

Edit: Bruno was about right too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.