Reflecting on past transfer dealings! With GRAPHS

While watching the Watford vs Tottenham game on ESPN I read a interesting tweet by Neil Allen, reporter for The News;

It got me thinking about how much money has been spent over the seasons and how much has gone out of the club. This can be explained by totalling the known expenditure via Transfermarket.co.uk (these do exclude loan fees and undisclosed fees, as these are unknown). So without beating around the bush too much lets knuckle down to the expenditure.

ALL THE STATS ARE APPROXIMATES!

Here is a line graph tallying the expenditure since Harry Redknapp took charge of his first full season in 2002/03 title winning season right up to the current season.

As we can see there is a steady increase for 3 years and then a large spike. In the early days Redknapp signed a lot of free transfers, astute signings, such as Merson, Festa, Hislop, Sheringham etc.
Then as Gaydamak starting influencing the club with his part ownership the money started to be splashed, with a whopping £51m being spent in the 2007/08 season, the year we won the FA Cup. In that season was such large signings such as David Nugent (£8m), Jermain Defoe (£8.84) and Sulley Muntari (£8m). Large signings for a club with a stadia of 21,000! Alarm bells should've been ringing around this time, but the FA Cup glory and the prospect of playing in the then UEFA Cup was quelled by this.
The gradual change towards the end of the Premier League glory days is noticeable, in 2008/9 this high £23m transfer spend would've been smaller if Crouch hadn't cost a highly inflated £12m! The best season for signings is 2010/11 with Cotterill and Lampitt's good transfer savvy bringing in free's and loans that helped get the club through the season. Then this season it's spike through the investment of Convers Sports Initiative which helped strengthen the squad but without getting rid of the high-earning deadwood that it inherited causing problems after the companies collapse in November 2011.

I will come onto signings later in another blog, that might take some more time to research.

So now moving onto the sales over the past 10 years! This is a lot more different to the first graph, a lot of players were released on free's rather than sold, maybe due to the nature of their contracts back then.

As you can see the outgoing sales starts of very small, there are a lot of releases in the earlier part of the graph and starts spiking around the FA Cup winning season and after it. The 2008-2010 period saw a lot of the huge talent in the Pompey squad leave, Diarra leaving for Real Madrid for £19m, Glen Johnson to Liverpool for £18m, Defoe for £15m etc. These helped ease huge loans taking out against the club by Gaydamak in the run up to the FA Cup triumph, it also helped 'manage' debt after the Russian's sudden lack of financial input after the 2008 financial crisis. After relegation from the Premier League the club shaved it's high earners and talent to the highest bidders, some players did well after leaving, some not.

Now lets look at the two graphs together, they make for an interesting comparison;

That shows how the club gradually peaked in the 2007/8 season with the FA Cup winning side, one of the best Portsmouth sides to grace Fratton Park since the Double First Divison winners in 1948-50! But this quickly fell apart since 2008. From buying £51m worth of talent in 2007/08 we then almost sold the same amount of money in the next season! The huge amount of money going out is mind-boggling, it shows how much of a financial black hole the club was in, if £105m worth of player sales still create a £80m debt hanging over the club it does raise issues of where the money went, or how bad our debt levels were to begin with!

It does show the sad decline of the club over the past few years, seeing the names that we bought and the players we had playing for us over the years make me wish we could do it all over again sometimes. I will always take the FA Cup win over being relegated allways, the way it made the whole city proud of the club, it was pure estatic pride when Sol Campbell lifted the FA Cup to the sound of 'Play Up Pompey' ringing in the background, the sight and sound of that will stay with me forever!

When Sol went up to lift the FA Cup! We were there! We were there!

After compiling this followed a few tweets talking about the worst signings made by Harry Redknapp which a few were pinged about like Chalkias, Karadas, all worthy names, but not Redknapp signings. Then compiling this made me remember some, here's my contribution;

 

and the reply!

 

Felt quite satisfied by that bit of banter!
If anyone is wondering who I compiled into these graphs here is the list and their approximate transfer price;

Transfers In

2002-03

Richard Hughes- £70k

Matthew Taylor- £530k

Vincent Pericard- £530k

Deon Burton- £330k

Total £1.45m

2003-04

Eyal Berkovic- £660k

Ivica Mornar- £530k

Richard Duffy- £400k

Dejan Stefanovic £2.2m

Amdy Faye £1.95m

Sebastien Olszar- £176k

Petri Pasanen- £260k

Total £6.2m

2004-05

Valery Mezague £440k

Aliou Cisse- £396k

Ricardo Fuller- £2.2m

Lomana LuaLua- £1.98m

Total- £5.1m

2005-06

Brian Priske- £660k

Benjani- £5.3m

Emmanuel Olisadebe- £440k

Franck Songo'o- £330k

Andrew O'Brien £2.64m

Dean Kiely £220k

Jhon Viafara- £2.11m

Total £14.498m

2006-07

Andrew Cole- £660k

Lauren- £484k

Niko Kranjcar- £3.96m

David James- £1.5m

Djimi Traore- £1.2m

Total £8.08m

2007-08

Jermaine Defoe- £8.14m

David Nugent- £8m

Lassana Diarra- £6.2m

Glen Johnson- £4.8m

Papa Bouba Diop- £4.4m

Danijel Subotic- £350k

Adda Djeziri- £27k

Arnold Mvuemba- £1.7m

Sulley Muntari- £8.8m

John Utaka- £8.8m

Total £51m

2008-09

Younes Kaboul- £5.5m

Nadir Belhadj- £3.9m

Hayden Mullins- £2.1m

Peter Crouch- £12m

Total- £23.5m

2009/10
Kevin Prince Boateng- £3.9m

Mike Williamson £2.1m

Tommy Smith- £1.76m

Total- £7.76m

2010-11

All free transfers

2011-12

Luke Varney- £750k

Jason Pearce- £400k

Erik Huseklepp- £2.2m

Greg Halford- £880k

Total- £4.2m

Transfers Out

2002/3

Shaun Derry- £530k

2003/4

Boris Zivkovic £176k

2004/5

Kevin Harper £66k

Rowan Vine £330k

Nigel Quashie- £2.77m

Amdy Faye- £2.65m

Total sales- £5.82m

2005/06

Yakubu 8.58m

Ricardo Fuller 132k

Total sales- £8.71m

2006/7

John Viafara £220k

Brian Priske £880k

Total sales- £1.1m

2007/8

Gary O'Neil £6.60m

Benjani £4.57m

Matty Taylor- £4.2m

Lomano Lua Lua £3.6m

Collins Mbesuma £330k

Dejan Stefanovic £1.3m

Total sales- £20.6m

2008/09

Pedro Mendes- £3.3m

Lassana Diarra- £17.6m

Jermain Defoe- £14.43m

Sulley Muntari- £13.2m

Total sales- £48.53m

2009/10

Sylvain Distin- £5.72m

Younes Kaboul- £5.2m

Asmir Begovic- £3.3m

Niko Kranjcar £2.46m

Glen Johnson £18.04m

Mike Williamson £968k

Peter Crouch £9.24m

Martin Cranie £880k

Total sales- £45.81m

2010/11

Kevin Prince Boateng £5.02m

John Utaka £440k

Nadir Belhadj £3.7m

Marc Wilson £3.2m

Papa Bouba Diop £270k

Matt Ritchie £265k

Tommy Smith £1.65m

Total sales- £14.55m

2011/12

Nadir Ciftci £160k