Record signings - do they work?

blurred · Post by **blurred** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:27 am

Not really a scientific approach, this, but looking down at the list of Liverpool's record signings there's a bit of a pattern:

Collymore - great for a season, turned into a nice person and ended up useless
Heskey - played well for a season, turned into a nice person and ended up useless
Cissé - played well in the patches that he could in 2005 owing to his broken leg, got moody and went off the boil
Torres - ...?

Looking at some of the other clubs' big buys, I'm sure there's a litany of failures in amongst the big bucks (players like Veron, Shevchenko and Rebrov spring to mind).

So yeah, I was just wondering if it's every team whose record signings turn out to be largely gash. Obviously Anelka had a decent season last year for you lot, but the big money when spent by the Premiership's high and mighty - do they get value for money?

Dave Sutton's barnet · Post by **Dave Sutton's barnet** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:29 am

Dean Holdsworth, Len Cantello...

Puskas · Post by **Puskas** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:38 am

Dave Sutton's barnet wrote:Dean Holdsworth, Len Cantello...

Is it partly the weight of expectation on them? They're the record signing, so they're expected to do more than anyone else - if they do something extraordinary, it's taken for granted (that's what we paid the money for), and if they mess up (and, being only human, they will occasionally) it's blown out of all proportion?
Although, in the case of the two listed above, it could just be because they're bobbins...

Dave Sutton's barnet · Post by **Dave Sutton's barnet** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:49 am

wasn't Bosko Balaban £11m?

communistworkethic · Post by **communistworkethic** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 11:05 am

rio ferdinand

blurred · Post by **blurred** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 11:56 am

Perhaps it's just a Liverpool thing, then? Players like Shearer, Ferdinand and Van Nistelrooy all worked out...

Puskas · Post by **Puskas** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 11:57 am

blurred wrote:Perhaps it's just a Liverpool thing, then? Players like Shearer, Ferdinand and Van Nistelrooy all worked out...

Juan Sebastian Veron, anyone?

hisroyalgingerness · Post by **hisroyalgingerness** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 12:49 pm

Juan Pablo Angel - £9.5m
Kevin Davies to Burn (if we're honest, he flopped there)

blurred · Post by **blurred** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 1:25 pm

Puskas wrote:
blurred wrote:Perhaps it's just a Liverpool thing, then? Players like Shearer, Ferdinand and Van Nistelrooy all worked out...
Juan Sebastian Veron, anyone?

See my first post

Harry Genshaw · Post by **Harry Genshaw** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 1:54 pm

As I recall it from the 70s onwards our record purchases were

Worthington £90,000 - Huge success
Gowling £120,000 - Good player for us.
Cantello £300,000 - Unmitigated disaster (save for an absolute screamer against Cambridge)
De Freitas £400,000 - Utter crap but his goals in the play off easily repaid his fee.
Taggart £1.5mill - Good player and worth every penny.
Elliott £2.5mill - Injury ruined what potentially was a good signing.
Holdsworth £3mil - Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Diouf £4.5mil - Quality signing.
Anelka £8mil - So far so good.

So a pretty mixed bag, all things considered.

trotter · Post by **trotter** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 1:57 pm

Harry Genshaw wrote:As I recall it from the 70s onwards our record purchases were

Worthington £90,000 - Huge success
Gowling £120,000 - Good player for us.
Cantello £300,000 - Unmitigated disaster (save for an absolute screamer against Cambridge)
De Freitas £400,000 - Utter crap but his goals in the play off easily repaid his fee.
Taggart £1.5mill - Good player and worth every penny.
Elliott £2.5mill - Injury ruined what potentially was a good signing.
Holdsworth £3mil - Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Diouf £4.5mil - Quality signing.
Anelka £8mil - So far so good.

So a pretty mixed bag, all things considered.

What about Terry Wharton? £70,000 from Wolves

Nozza · Post by **Nozza** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:25 pm

£8Mil - Tore Andre Flo(p)

bobo the clown · Post by **bobo the clown** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 4:43 pm

trotter wrote:What about Terry Wharton? £70,000 from Wolves

... along with £60,000 paid for Gareth Williams from Cardiff, thus spending (& more) at a stroke the money we received from that MASSIVE club Citeh, for Frannie Lee.

Good move Mr Ridding !!

trotter · Post by **trotter** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 6:46 pm

bobo - do you remember that there was only Gareth Williams who ever passed to Terry Wharton or it seemed that way anyway!!

bobby5 · Post by **bobby5** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:46 pm

Who was that Ukranian fella Spurs signed? He cost a few bob.

Dave Sutton's barnet · Post by **Dave Sutton's barnet** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:51 pm

bobby5 wrote:Who was that Ukranian fella Spurs signed? He cost a few bob.

As Blurred mentioned in passing, that was Radio Rebrov – a trequartista mistrusted (and thus wasted) by George Graham

£11m if memory serves

officer_dibble · Post by **officer_dibble** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:46 pm

Marlet.....

Verbal · Post by **Verbal** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 1:33 am

Dave Sutton's barnet wrote:
bobby5 wrote:Who was that Ukranian fella Spurs signed? He cost a few bob.
As Blurred mentioned in passing, that was Radio Rebrov – a trequartista mistrusted (and thus wasted) by George Graham

£11m if memory serves

Wasn't it him and Sheva who fired Dynamo Kiev to the CL semis one year? Oh how their careers diverged...

Batman · Post by **Batman** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 7:10 am

What about Silvain Wiltord? £13m and counting...........left on a free four years later

sluffy · Post by **sluffy** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:54 am

Steve Daley
Joined: Man City from Wolves in Sept 1979
Transfer fee: £1.43m
Today his fee is worth: £4.3m (calculated on the rate of inflation between then and now)
Today he would cost: £28.1m (calculated as a percentage of the record transfer fee, then and now)

'Looking back it was a very foolish time,' Man City fan Nick Leeson told OSM. He's not talking about Barings, it's worse than that. He's recalling the era of casual spending which arguably set City back 20 years. That era is epitomised by Daley - 'the latest plutocratic passenger on the City gravy train' as The Observer described him - whose name remains a byword for big-money flops. The story goes that Malcolm Allison offered £400,000 and couldn't believe it when his chairman Peter Swales did the deal for a million more (Swales always denied it). Bryan Robson had recently joined Man United for a similar fee, so perhaps Daley was the victim of a perverse form of oneupmanship. The Observer's report of his City debut reported that, 'everything he did was neat and clever but none of it ever served to bind the side together.' It didn't get any better.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/stor ... 12,00.html

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Record signings - do they work?

Record signings - do they work?

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