What was Chelsea's net spend last summer? They bought Costa and Fabregas but sold Ruiz, De Bruyn etc. I think they may even have made a small profit. And yet they led the league from start to finish. Compare their spending to Man C, Man U and Arsenal last summer and you'll realise your 'fact' is in fact not a fact.
Disclaimer - Yes I know Chelsea had a decade of buying titles preceding Mourinho's latest stint in charge.
Yeah, this bit isn't true either.
There is a far stronger correlation between wages and league performance than there is with transfer expenditure. I'm going to cite Why England Lose by Kuper and Szymanski as my primary evidence for this view.
At April 2015 the wages table showed United, City and Chelsea with similar wage bills, followed by the goons, followed by Liverpool, then us, (we're some way behind Liverpool). After that there's a raft of clubs with very similar levels of spending on wages. You have a few outliers, (QPR, southamptioon), but largely wages and league performance correlate.
Do you have anything to back your claim that net transfer expenditure has a stronger link to league performance than this? I'd be keen to see it if you have. I'm kind of talking about numbers and things here.
Yeah Levy grew the new training ground with magic beans he bought at Hackney market and the new stadium he wished by the power of a magical genie! How grown men can be so blinded by bullshit is unreal.
Think Chavs currently "owe" Roman just shy of £1bn. I'm pretty sure he tops them up every year too so that number just grows.What a dreadful counter argument. Chelsea have a huge positive net spend over the last 10 years! Moreover I think you're forgetting a few players they bought last year, ie Felipe, Remy, etc. However I didn't say the team that spends the most wins the title the next season. I said there is a clear correlation between positive net spend and success. This is an indisputable fact.
Why do people talk about net spend only in terms of headline transfer fees?
You said there wasn't any more investment the season our revenue shot up from the CL and actually Wages went up by £24m in one seasonyou're saying in the space of a season our wages went up £24m? I'd be very surprised by that? Over a few years, yeah, I could understand.
But again you're falling into the trap of talking about a single aspect. Every time someone mentions wages someone else could mention tv money inflation, commercial revenue etc.. I'm not overlooking any aspects.
I feel our heroes left prematurely because they didn't see any other world class talent coming in alongside them, and didn't think they could win stuff as a result.
I don't doubt that the correlation with net spend is greater in relation to the overall team standingsWest Ham are 6th in net spend over the 5 years with Sunderland in 8th. We're currently bottom if this table is to be believed:
http://www.transferleague.co.uk/pre...tables/premier-league-table-last-five-seasons
The correlation between wage bill and success does seem to be much stronger than net spend.
But probably what has a bigger truth to our situation is over the last 5 years we've finished above Liverpool 4 times. Them trying to spend their way to being better simply isn't working.
Lets not drift this off topic in here, if you want quote me and take it elsewhere fine, but the bottom line for any company is not it's gross revenue or it's gross expenditure (of course they matter but only in as much as they decide the net) it's the net of those two things, it's profit or loss.
You think you can draw parallels between the non-football business world and the football business world? Really? The football commodity being human beings is obviously different to the commodity being oil. Oil doesn't have a say in where is goes, it goes to wherever its owner sends it. If big name players do not want to play for us, then how is that Levy's fault?
Exactly, so what can Levy do in order to satisfy people like yourself who want in excess of 80 million spent just to say that we have net spend?No, the commodity is football, the game. Even in the oil industry, it's employees and specialists can choose where they work. Oil doesn't move from the ground until humans are involved, the same way football doesn't get played until humans are involved.
@The General & @SNAFU_Clarke
The correlation between net spend and success is only vaguely relevant for the top four teams really, and even in their mini league the net spend really has no direct correlation. Looking at the last 5 years averages, there are so many wild disparities between net spend and league position you cannot draw any meaningful true correlation. Liverpool have averaged a higher net spend than Arsenal. West Ham have only net spent 9m less than Arsenal. Just about every team in the EPL had a higher net spend than us, and the vast anomalies continue. Below the top 4 there is virtually no correlation between net spend and league place.
(at this point I probably owe @Trix an apology, as this is perhaps what he was getting at).
On the other hand, the correlation between wage spend and league position is far closer and more ordered with the anomalies often being measured in smaller increments.
http://www.transferleague.co.uk/pre...tables/premier-league-table-last-five-seasons
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...y-with-Premier-Leagues-highest-wage-bill.html
Exactly, so what can Levy do in order to satisfy people like yourself who want in excess of 80 million spent just to say that we have net spend?