97m for Lukaku. I remember him as an average Chelsea player and pretty good Everton player, but 97m?! I know that seems to be the going rate for any half decent footballer this window but wow.
Yup, hard to see why they have spunked that much on him when 20m ish extra would have got them Kane or Haaland.
Looks like City are lining up £150 million bid for Kane, surely they will have to move a player out if that happens. Lukaku will get 25 - 30 goals in the league for Chelsea, they are crying out for a striker. Again what's £97 million to them, it could be double that and they would pay it if they were aloud and needed to. I've said it before, City and Chelsea have pretty much ruined football for me, they have torn up 150 years of history in the last 15 years by spending, spending and spending. Usually spending well, but still its still bollocks.
Yeah, I see where you are coming from, and I do agree. BUT, they did break Utd's stranglehold on the PL and whilst they have spent ridiculous amounts, Utd, Pool and Arsenal/Spurs did that before those two came along. I guess the difference is that those four did it on the back of sustained success or a huge fan base. In Utd's case on some very astute marketing when the PL was kicing off.
It's well known that Chelsea were weeks away from 'doing a Leeds/Pompey' when Ibramovic bought them. And, well City were equally pish when the Qatari's bought them. Any success those clubs have had is based SOLELY on the money invested and not "earned" the same way it has been at those other clubs (and at their predecessors for decades). Then again, none of the owners of those four, or Leicester, are exactly poor. They just don't hand over blank cheques every summer. And, no, I wouldn't care if I was a fan of Chelsea or City.
For me the problem with them is more what they have exacerbated, the ridiculous rise in player wages and transfer fees. As well as the payments to agents, that now seem to be on top of fees rather than coming out of signing on fees and player wages. Agents get a fee for negotiating a transfer, plus a cut of the signing on fee via their representing the player, AND a cut of his wages every week. For the likes of the Lukaku/Pogba deals those are £10-£20m, plus a chunk of whatever the signing on fee is, plus 10-25% of their wages (so another £20-£100kpw) all for negotiating a transfer both players and clubs wanted. Even "only" £10m for negotiating a transfer is enough to set someone up for life and then some. But these agents have scores and scores of clients and move them about every second or third year. They just leech money out of football.
There's a lot to be said for following the James Milner model, of not having an agent and just getting someone supplied by the PFA to negotiate his contracts and handing over the money (a lot less than agents charge) to the PFA. I think Scholesy did something similar.
But the growth in player wages, transfer fees and agents has been happening for decades. The arrival of City and Chelsea with their blank chequebooks has merely sped it up. The real problem is that FFP has been designed to stop someone else doing what the Qatari's (at City and PSG) and Ibramovic (at Chelsea) have done. So if, say, Bill Gates decided he loved Exeter City and wanted to turn them into a European Super power by ploughing in all his billions..............ehhhh, no can do. FFP stops that.
Until it is overhauled or scrapped, we are stuck with the very exciting status quo. 4-6 "big clubs" in England, 2 in Spain, 1 in France, 1 in Germany, and 1 in Italy. There are a few clubs on the edge of that table, Atleti, Leicester, Sevilla, Inter, AC, Roma, and Dortmund, but none will be able to establish themselves as a dominant domestic or European power as they don't have the financial muscle and their best players will simply be poached.