nPower Championship Transfer Spending

The nPower Championship is over, another mixed emotions year, with my own club starting as possible mid-table fodder ending with relegation amidst administration. For other clubs it was either missing out on play-offs, title chases or merely a write-off of a season. Now the season closes to an end with Reading emphatically taking the title back to Berkshire, Southampton are also promoted once again finishing in 2nd place.

With the play-offs still to be played I thought it was time to reflect on the transfer spending, I felt this would be an interesting one to researching as it would give a good observation on how much money has been spent and the comparison between that and the clubs league position at the end of the season. For some clubs it's surprising, for others it isn't.

Here is the graph I compiled using stats from Transfermarkt.co.uk, these use the most accurate transfer fees you can get (minus the undisclosed fees, as they are listed as '?'), the graph was compacted due to 24 entries on the X axis!

Click on picture to see the full size graph

Transfer Spend;

Barnsley- £1.14m

Birmingham City- £0.5m

Blackpool- £0.66m

Brighton & Hove Albion- £5.32m

Bristol City- £0.35m

Burnley- £1.65m

Cardiff- £1.94m

Coventry- £0.48m

Crystal Palace- £0.59m

Derby- £3.02m

Doncaster Rovers- £0.12m

Hull- £1.42m

Ipswich Town- £2.89m

Leeds United- £0.81m

Leicester City- £15.78m

Middlesbrough- £0

Millwall- £1.21m

Nottingham Forest- £1.08m

Peterborough- £1.75m

Portsmouth- £4.23m

Reading- £1.75m

Southampton- £4.5m

Watford- £1.04m

West Ham- £10.85m

On the final Championship table with the net spend displayed alongside the league table makes for an interesting read into how much investment went into the teams and where they ended up, most notable being Leicester;

 What the relation between the chart and the final table shows is that teams with relatively little funding put up a good fight in this season, with many clubs going for more astute free transfer signings over potentially expensive ones. Middlesbrough have finished just below the play-offs and their frugal transfer policy nearly paid off, with a large squad full of quality players it is easy to see why they finished so high and without needing much investment.

On the flip side large investment hasn't garnered success, as previously mentioned Leicester have invested a huge amount into their squad, buying expensive players into the squad by Sven Goran-Eriksson. Their policy lead to them stuttering this season, finishing a respectable 9th place, and I'm sure hoping to push on next year for promotion, they were hot favourites at the start of the year.

Portsmouth are the biggest casualty of the big spenders, after the collapse of CSI and administration in February 2012 the club tumbled down the league with the 10 point deduction and was unable to salvage another Great Escape. As a Pompey fan I'm still bemused that the £4.23m spent on players only got us around 5/6 players, utterly ridiculous, as when Steve Cotterill left we had a squad of 18/19 players which left hardly any cover for injuries or rotation. Very bad business by the club, thankfully those involved have duly left. 

West Ham have invested heavily after falling from grace from the Premier League, they have invested a whopping £10m into the squad with Sam Allardyce at the helm, they lead the division for much of the season, but poor home form cost them the automatic promotion spots as Reading romped past them in the second half of the season. January transfer window saw West Ham invest heavily again in players after their stuttering forwards couldn't find the goals, dipping their toes they bought Maynard and Vaz Te for a combined fee of £3m. Earlier in the season they signed Sam Baldock from MK Dons for a £2.2m deal, but the young lad has found it difficult after the January arrivals only playing 23 times this season.

A lot of the clubs on the list have used this season to consolidate or build for the next season, I've noticed a few clubs who have had players leave the club on large fees and the club investing those funds to either pay debts or invest back into the club, i.e. Oxlade-Chamberlain going to Arsenal for £12m and Middlesbrough selling £4.2m of players without spending that immediately back into the playing squad and still finishing 7th is commendable and astute.

So there we go, another quick little blog, apologies if I've skimmed over a few clubs and their transfer activity, I'd love to go into detail about all the clubs, but I've neither the time or the patience to go over it at this moment in time. I may make another blog similar to this comparing the spending over the Football League (and Premier League) and perhaps mix in the sales market as well.

Dave