Currently a huge topic – as Claret and Hugh‘s earlier post suggests – PSR and soon to be unveiled Squad Cost Rules dictate how football clubs must run: In short, those clubs that are the richest get to stay rich but new upstarts cannot join the elite merely by a rich benefactor chucking billions into the bank account as the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City did to reach their current positions.
Whether you believe it is protectionism or ‘financial fair play’ depends on who you support.
But it is here to stay.
West Ham’s dreadful stats of only ever having made profit on half a dozen players just won’t cut it any more. Whilst Graham Potter steers acquisitions towards younger players such as el Hadji Malick Diouff, the only way to financial security in future will be to find talent before it costs eight figures and buy more, speculatively and develop. West Ham have increased their scouting network to try and buy in more talent and sell on or develop themselves.
Slow to the party, the Hammers are a mile behind other clubs who have no such PSR worries. Look how Brentford, for example, have ‘schooled’ West Ham in a stark lesson in financial management which the Irons need to learn from:
Benrahma – bought for £2.7m sold for £23 million ( Yes, to West Ham who incidentally lost money on his sale)
M’buemo bought for £5.5 million, sold for £70 million
Watkins bought for £1.8 million sold for £34 million
That is a profit of £118 million from player trading.
West Ham cannot rely on unearthing another Declan Rice to save them from financial disaster every three years. That was a once in a generation deal and the club need to become more adept at buying in more speculatively rather than getting the cheque book out for a £40 million level talent.
Instead of buying in Saïd Benrahma at £23 million and then selling at a loss, the Hammers need to be the club picking players up for the £2.7 million and developing.
Football has changed, for better or worse: West Ham need to move out of the dark ages and follow suit.
Don’t think that becoming a development nursery is the way to go to become a PL powerhouse.
Forget the money and let’s all be football fans.
COYI
Totally Agree, this is supposedly the Red Bull model that needs implementing.
This is why we have an academy
It all sounds very good, but what you are describing is every club running themselves as a feeder club for the few monied clubs. A few clubs could do this successfully, but every club trying to do it won’t work. In the past you used an Academy to do this, feed your own team with some players and have some to sell on. Then the big clubs found it was quite useful to have teams like West Ham develop young talent and much easier to tap the players and their families up to get them to not sign new contracts. They will find strategies to avoid paying big fees as well. Then you get a new problem which you can see this window. No one wants to sign players over twenty seven. Everyone wants nineteen year old ‘prospects’. That’s why we and others can’t move older players on. Then FIFA finds a way to throw money at the big clubs through a preseason tournament just to add fuel to the bonfire.
Agree although most established PL cubs can’t do what Brentford did on price. The model developing youth and attracting the best young players giving them a pathway to first team football does look like at academy level what we are doing. The next question is how do we go to developing our youth players into Harvey Elliot’s, McAtee’s etc
Southampton have historically been good at that as well as Liverpool and to some degree City and are there lessons to learn there.
Why can’t we have first team clubs in other leagues like for example Slavia Prague or Lille where our best young players can spend two seasons or more to grow as players without the British press over hyping them.
In the PL and lower leagues it’s a bit like learning skiing on a black run, the ones that survive to the bottom are excellent though sometimes battle scarred, learning in other leagues where they can grow other skills outside of the spotlight would be a better nursery or intermediate slope that should help more of them fulfil their potential than is currently the case,
Maybe send a link to this article to Mr David Sullivan then, Martin. He certailny seems to be stuck in the dark ages. Can an old dog be taught new tricks though?
Very true, the Brighton and Brentford model really suits our club with a tradition of developing players especially our own youth team.
We have a really bad record of buying expensive players without a plan of how to play them or they just aren’t very good.
But it needs to be properly and seriously funded to allow to quick progress so not to lose out to other teams.
Things will never change under this ownership. Half the championship clubs have better training facilities than us .
Interesting concept.
Perhaps that’s the difference between a small club and big one?
Do West Ham aspire to be a ‘big’ club, or a developmental/feeder club?