Bruno Guimaraes’ £75million move from Newcastle United to Arsenal gives more supporting evidence to several recent themes.
At 28 years old, the sizeable outlay on the Brazilian
midfielder continues Arsenal’s ploy of spending big money on players who can
immediately improve their first team. A year ago, their roughly £185million in
fees on players aged over 24 was the most ever spent on that cohort by an
English club in a single season. A first Premier League title in 22 years
comprised proof of concept.
In the 12 years to the end of June 2025, Newcastle generated
£352million from player sales. A reasonable estimate, even after sell-on
clauses and solidarity payments to former clubs, has them matching that figure
inside the past 12 months.
Such statistics say lots about where Arsenal and Newcastle
are as clubs, but the Guimaraes deal also underscores what is fast becoming a
Premier League motif: the richest teams are ever more frequently plucking the
best players from the rest of the division.
Guimaraes’ transfer is the 10th instance this summer of one
of the ‘Big Six’ — Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester
United and Tottenham Hotspur — acquiring players (often the best ones) from the
other 14 clubs in the top tier.
Using a methodology that takes the six highest-earning clubs
in a given Premier League season (which has been those same ‘Big Six’ teams
since 2009) and counting the combined number of signings from the rest of the
division, excluding no-fee, backup goalkeepers, like those Meslier and Darlow
deals, and intra-‘Big Six’ moves the New York Times has found that
particular flow of transfers is at an all-time high, even as middling to
lower-end Premier League teams enjoy greater wealth than ever.
Naturally, that has conferred significant financial benefit
to the selling clubs. Those 23 transfers have come at a combined cost of almost
£1.2billion, which can hardly be sniffed at. Those sums allow, to an extent,
sellers to reinvest in talent from elsewhere, improving as a result. Combined
with more money than ever from domestic prize-money distributions, the Premier
League’s middle has probably never been stronger. Repeated English wins in the
finals of the Europa League and UEFA Conference League speak volumes.
The rich clubs are richer than ever
In 2024-25, the average turnover of a ‘Big Six’ club
was £635million — and this in a year where three of them didn’t play in the
Champions League. The average turnover at the remaining 14 Premier League teams
that season was £214m, a gap of £421m.
That gap has never been larger and, save for the two seasons
hit by the pandemic, has grown every year since 2011. Since Covid-19, average
revenues among the ‘Big Six’ have increased by £189million, more than three
times the increase at other Premier League clubs. The elite can now offer far
more, both in wages and trophy-hunting opportunities.
Compounding the issue are football’s financial rules. Those have long allowed the richest teams to
spend more, being predicated on at least some pretence of sustainability, but
the shift to a squad cost ratio rule tethered to club revenues has not
strengthened the bargaining position of the less wealthy.
Selling clubs have more money in their pockets than ever,
but consistently replacing your best players is no easy feat, not least when
everyone now knows you’re flush with cash. Behind Brighton, the other two most
devoured by the ‘Big Six’ in the past decade are Leicester City and
Wolverhampton Wanderers. They have lost six players each to the division’s
richest since 2017 and, tellingly, both have been relegated in recent years and
now play outside the Premier League.
The six highest-earning clubs in England
have remained the same for almost two decades and continue to enjoy far greater
matchday and commercial revenues than the rest. European football as a whole
has been subject to significant stratification and, while the English game may
have convinced itself otherwise, it is far from immune.
In a fair sporting world, clubs with inefficient recruitment
operations would be overtaken by smarter efforts, like those showcased at
Brighton. In the world we actually live in, the richer teams take their best
players off them year after year, reinforcing a glass ceiling which dictates
that, for most clubs, finishing sixth or seventh is about as good as it will
now get. Finishing fourth is a borderline miracle. Actually winning the title
is a fantasy.
The story goes that mega rich owners like at City, Chelsea and PSG had to be stopped from ruining the game by artificially inflating prices by splurging spare cash on their "vanity" projects beyond what the heroic organically grown clubs can compete with....... so in came FFP/PSR/SCR etc.........sounds pretty noble..... until you dig in and it falls apart................firstly those "vanity" projects have grown their enterprise value, and hence their owners wealth dramatically, totally dismantling the myth that they were not in it for profit...... they absolutely were just like PIF absolutely are at Newcastle......its just that they focus on enterprise value not the annual P&L.... then you take a look at the history of Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool etc..... the heroes who grew organically........ and you learn that they didnt grow organically at all........ all of them are where they are "only" because of wealthy owners injecting private wealth throughout their entire history .........people know about City, PSG and Chelsea because its recent...... but people dont know that "all" the other big clubs had exactly the same history starting from the early 1900s... its just that their "Abramovich" moments happened before we can remember .... and they had more than one Abramovich moment too..... now the rules prevent anyone else doing the same and ensure the revenue gap gets bigger each year..... what I have written here is just the tip of the iceberg really, the more you dig in the more scandalous the rules become and we are already at a point where just a handful of clubs in the world can compete and their place is permanently protected until someone has the strength to repair the broken rulebook
ReplyDeleteThanks for this detailed and helpful comment, an historical perspective is needed.
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