August 6 – With the transfer window closed, now comes the financial reckoning. Who snagged a bargain and who was ripped off? Much of that analysis can only be done once the players start putting in performances on the pitch, but it doesn’t prevent some benchmark valuations.
The CIES Football Observatory has used their existing player valuation algorithm to measure the plus or minus differences in fees paid. Their stats shows the highest value achieved in a player sale was for Gonzalo Higuaín (from Naples to Juventus), while the overall best selling club was Sevilla.
Higuaín achieved €23.8 million above his CIES valuation, mainly due to a €90 million release clause.
Sevilla profited by €34.9 million above their aggregate CIES player valuations. The second placed best selling club was Premier League Crystal Palace with Naples third.
Palace are in second place mainly due to the price they achieved for the sale of Yannick Bolasie to Everton. But Everton are no patsies, they come in ranked seventh in the best selling club chart, mainly due to the sale of John Stones to Manchester City for €20.3 million above his CIES valuation.
According to the CIES stats, Premier League clubs accounted for 7 of the top 10 over payments for players.
Chelsea’s acquisitions of David Luis and Marcos Alonso were two of them and Michy Batshuayi gave them another entry in the top 20. Paul Pogba to Manchester United was ranked as the eighth placed over-payment, but Eric Bailly was placed second in the chart as a massive €22.5 million over payment. Man City also had two top 10 overpayments, for Stones and Leroy Sane (10th).
Looking at the top 20 best selling clubs, PSG (8th), Real Madrid (11th), Dortmund (12th) and Bayern Munich (17th) show that the biggest clubs can also be big sellers if they are smart. Noticeably absent in the best selling list are any of England’s money giants and Manchester City in particular whose new manager Pep Guardiola had a major clean-out of the squad he inherited from Manuel Pelligrini.
So how reliable are the CIES valuations? During the last transfer window CIES says that “the correlation measured between fees estimated and paid was 80%.”
For more detail on the how CIES makes its valuations go to http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/mr/mr16/en/
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