Chelsea made their sharpest deals early in the summer transfer window
By George Perry
Chelsea frittered away much of their bargaining power during their summer of transfer inactivity. They conducted their shrewdest deals early, and paid the price with their deadline day purchases.
By the time August 31 rolled around, Chelsea had to pay any price to round out their squad. With few players on the market and no time to spare, cost was no hindrance to signing Davide Zappacosta and Danny Drinkwater (for whom the nominal end of the window was no hindrance, either).
The Blues entered deadline day with a £45 million transfer profit for 2017. After spending £25 million on Zappacosta and £35 million on Drinkwater, they ended the transfer year £15 million in the red. Their summer activity alone ran a deficit of approximately £97 million.
This was the third highest deficit in England and the fifth highest in Europe, according to a report from the CIES Football Observatory. Unsurprisingly, the Manchester clubs had a greater negative balance among Premier League teams. Milan outspent their income by a similar amount, and Paris Saint-Germain dwarfed all clubs and most small countries with their budget deficit.
The CIES report also listed the 20 largest gaps (positive and negative) between estimated market value and transfer fees. Chelsea appear three times: twice for good deals, once not so much.
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Chelsea sold Nemanja Matic to Manchester United for €20.1 million over his estimated value. They also paid €15.2 million less than value for Antonio Rudiger. The Rudiger sale was one of only three instances on the list of a team under-paying for a player (ex-Blue Mohamed Salah’s move to Liverpool was another). On the other hand, Chelsea paid €18.2 million more for Davide Zappacosta.
Danny Drinkwater’s £35 million signing must have been just off the cusp of CIES’s top 20. TransferMarkt (using different equations) estimated his market value at €20 million below his fee. Alvaro Morata, on the other hand, arrived at Chelsea for almost his exact market value
The Blues signed Antonio Rudiger on 09 July, signed Alvaro Morata on 21 July and sold Nemanja Matic on 31 July. Davide Zappacosta and Danny Drinkwater, on the other hand, arrived on deadline day.
Tiemoue Bakayoko is an exception to this pattern, arriving on July 15 for well more than his TransferMarkt estimated value. Still, the broad trend holds up even before factoring the distortions caused by the August mega-transfers. Jose Mourinho spoke to the importance of conducting deals early, before anything massive happens in the market.
"I think we were very clever. We thought that something could happen that could change the market forever… [A]fter Neymar, everything changed – and changed for the worse in terms of prices. I think Lukaku on August 31 would have been £150 million. Matic would have been £60m or £70million. Neymar changed everything. – Evening Standard"
Set aside the self-aggrandizement and the notion that Manchester United do not distort the transfer market themselves. Mourinho is correct. Fees across Europe went up after Neymar’s signing as costs were rescaled almost independent of value. Paris Saint-Germain doubled-down not only on their profligacy but on the new normal for the market by signing Kylian Mbappe for £166 million.
A new record fee is nearly a rite of summer now. The longer a team waits to buy a player the more they risk being on the wrong side of a price spike. Chelsea’s delays weakened their position and drove up their costs independent of PSG’s mega-transfers. The Neymar and Mbappe deals compounded the price increases Chelsea had to accept.
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Chelsea may very well get their money’s worth from Zappacosta and Drinkwater, as they did with last year’s deadline day signings, Marcos Alonso and David Luiz. A full trophy case is more important than a balanced transfer ledger. But Chelsea should consider breaking their long-established pattern of transfer timing, both to save money (which could be used on more or better players) and to spare us all the stress of August 31.