Premier League Transfer Madness In Full Flow
With less than a week to go before the start of the English Premier League, the usual summer transfer madness is in full flow.
Despite changing their management personnel, Liverpool still seem intent on over-paying for British talent. Joe Allen is undoubtedly a promising player, and Liverpool manager Brendan Rogers has a history of getting the best out of him–but is he really worth £15m? Managers who try to buy players from their old club always pay over the odds, and Liverpool appear to always pay over the odds too–so maybe this wasn’t such a big surprise.
What is incredibly surprising is that Wolves turned down bids of £12m for Stephen Fletcher and £8m for Matt Jarvis. Both are decent acquisitions for lower-half clubs, but both bids are about 50% too high and frankly it’s mind-boggling that Wolves aren’t selling.
Jack Rodwell has secured a move from Everton defending champs Manchester City, where he may well spend most of the season sitting on the bench–unless he can oust one of Barry, Milner, De Jong or Toure from the starting XI. The rumour mill has the fee anywhere between £12m and £20m. The lower end of that range would be a fair price, but you can’t help but wonder whether he would have been better off staying put and getting a regular game in the Everton first XI.
Chelsea have splashed out on over £80m worth of talent–all of it seemingly on attacking midfielders. The Blues now have 14 first team midfielders, and you have to wonder how manager Roberto Di Matteo is going to keep senior players like Frank Lampard happy when their role becomes more and more peripheral. There’s a joke about expanding middle sections in there somewhere….
As for the rest at the sharp end of the table, Spurs and Man Utd have made minor improvements, but nothing to strike fear into the heart of their opponents, though both have a habit of making last minute swoops.
Arsenal, however, have quietly gone about bringing in some very decent talent in midfielder Santi Carzorla and strikers Olivier Giroud & Lukas Podolski. Having said that, there have been a few seasons of Arsenal bringing in seemingly quality players and those players underachieving: do the names Arshavin, Gervinho and Chamakh ring any bells?
It will be interesting to see if the sale of either Arsenals’ Robin Van Persie or Spurs’ Luka Modric will trigger a chain-reaction through the league, or if the transfer window will shut with a whimper.
