With the 2016/17 summer transfer window opening for business on July 1, and this season being the year that the new television deal will give an uplift to all member clubs, fans could be salivating at the potential warchests on display this summer.
Reports in the media confirm Jose Mourinho has signed his first player for Manchester United in a deal worth around £30million in the shape of Eric Bailly, other press reports suggest newly promoted Champions Burnley could give Sean Dyche £60million to spend in total – and well, pretty much every club in the topflight in the coming year is bound to have similar stories and sums suggested based on their equivalent size in the division.
With an expected television revenue average of around the £125million mark, and it said the bottom placed club will pick up roughly what Arsenal did for finishing second in the table, a rounded £101million, whilst the new television money has caveats in how and what it can be used on – ie with Financial Fair Play it’s not to be used to overly inflate wages – let’s be honest, it won’t take the financial whizzes around football long (if they haven’t already) to find perfectly legal and within the rules ways of eeking out the most from every extra million that is now going to be flowing into their clubs bank accounts.
And the more ways that can go towards buying the best players, and paying them for such, logically it should dictate clubs that can spend more with stay ahead of the pack that can’t, but that the overall quality and level of competition slightly closes as the overall quality of players should increase in line.
Whether 2015/16 was purely an aberration with Leicester City lifting the title, and just a bad day at the office for the expected Sky top four/six, we’ll have the answers in eleven months – but when you look at the five year net spend of clubs populating the top flight for next year, it does produce an interesting table.
The top five clubs speak for themselves with their phenomenal spending in recent years, and if it was a pub quiz question, I would imagine the only debate would be around their placing – but the rest of the table does not take the form you would expect.
Having battled relegation for a few seasons now, Sunderland sit in seventh place and just over £20million separates them from Arsenal. Current Champions Leicester have spent an astonishing £63.65million apparently, yet Tottenham are in last place registering a massive profit in net terms compared to everyone else.
With a nod to Talksport and sums collated by spending prior to this summer’s window – it’ll be interesting at this time next year to see the five year averages again and whether some teams really shoot up this particular table with the money now on offer.
|
Pos
|
Team
|
Five Yr Spend
|
2015/16 Finish
|
|
1
|
Manchester United
|
£282.26m
|
5th place
|
|
2
|
Manchester City
|
£280.56m
|
4th place
|
|
3
|
Liverpool
|
£161.37m
|
8th place
|
|
4
|
Chelsea
|
£150.55m
|
10th place
|
|
5
|
Arsenal
|
£97.59m
|
2nd place
|
|
6
|
West Ham United
|
£79.28m
|
7th place
|
|
7
|
Sunderland
|
£78.52m
|
17th place
|
|
8
|
Leicester City
|
£63.65m
|
Premiership Champions
|
|
9
|
Stoke City
|
£59.67m
|
9th place
|
|
10
|
Crystal Palace
|
£51.12m
|
15th place
|
|
11
|
Watford
|
£45.73m
|
13th place
|
|
12
|
Bournemouth
|
£44.81m
|
16th place
|
|
13
|
West Bromwich Albion
|
£42.07m
|
14th place
|
|
14
|
Everton
|
£33.03m
|
11th place
|
|
15
|
Hull City
|
£32.88m
|
Play Off Champions
|
|
16
|
Southampton
|
£26.46m
|
6th place
|
|
17
|
Middlesbrough
|
£19.49m
|
Championship Promoted
|
|
18
|
Swansea City
|
£7.41m
|
12th place
|
|
19
|
Burnley
|
£2.93
|
Championship Champions
|
|
20
|
Tottenham Hotspur
|
£44.79m P
|
3rd place
|
The table certainly poses many questions and most will have their thoughts on what it means, how much can be read into it and so on – but one thing that’s clear when you look at final league placing compared to average spend, is money does not fix or guarantee everything in the game, but it certainly helps – especially if you spend it sensibly.
