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

A Little Help From Our Friend (almost)

Finally we get back to domestic football after the short lived FA Cup campaign after a 4-0 loss to Chelsea, after reading updates most of the day when I could (working you see..) it sounded like a harsh defeat. But positives came out of the game as well, such as holding a top 4 team to 0-0 for 45 minutes.

Going into the fixture against title chasing West Ham we are unbeaten at home since we lost to Peterborough 3-2 in September 2011, impressive to say the least. I wasn't sure how we would fair in this game, with injuries stretching our squad, Varney, Rocha out still the team saw Adam Webster make another return to the bench over experienced players like Kanu.

West Ham themselves have a few injuries and their form hasn't been good of late, they've never been able to capitalise on Southampton of late, whenever they've lost, West Ham have lost, vice versa with wins. So to keep the pressure on the rivals down the road they had to win, their away form is the best in the league. This was going to be a clash of form from the offset.
Now for a confession, I have no idea who Kevin Friend is (only referee's I remember are Slaughter and Deadman), maybe if I was told he was that infamous referee from the Sunderland and Reading game last season then I might of guessed where this game was going in terms of decisions....

Friend sends off Yebda against Sunderland back in 2010

The switch of ends was interesting, it was the first time this has happened at home since we played Peter....oh dear....this does not bode well. Now within 15 minutes Friend already made a few dubious decisions, such as Futacs being held, being pulled the ground etc. The decisions were soft and were never for us it seemed. Halford came close early on after Lawrence dinked a lovely ball into the penalty box and Halford headed over.

We found it difficult to get the ball of West Ham at times, they kept possession well and pushed forward slowly but with confidence, it was a boring first half in this respect. West Ham lacked clinical finish, they would push forward but never get a shot on goal, always broken down before this. Portsmouth when we ever saw the ball were too stifled and slow, again losing the midfield battle which we always do!

Then came the penalty, hard to see from the Fratton End, didn't know what it was for, but seems to have been a little bit soft, especially when Futacs had been dragged the ground twice by West Ham players prior to this, with a help of an arm around his neck! Noble scored and Henderson was unlucky not to have saved it, just getting a hand to it.

I can't really be bothered to talk about the rest of the game, as otherwise I'll just get angry about the referee! I found him to be totally incompetent at referee-ing this game, he just was not consistent. Papa Bouba Diop would go down (because he's a donkey on ice) and it's a foul, but being hacked to the floor isn't? A utter joke, the stats make us look dirty, but West Ham were no angels, Kevin Nolan should've been given another yellow for dissent for constantly trying to influence the referee, always chatting in his ear. No wonder he can't hit the target, he had 4 good chances and waste ALL of them.

The red card against Norris was baffling, he didn't take too much time thinking about it, I bet he even grinned at the possibility to show a Pompey player a red card, again. It totally ruined the game for both sides, neither played anything decent. Pompey kept trying to push for an equaliser but was thwarted by our numerical disadvantage and West Ham couldn't get a ball into a decent position to score, if they want to get promoted they need to score more goals, as we could've won/drawn the game had it not been for Norris going.

I was also left fuming by the decision of Friend to signal for a corner and then blow for full time while setting up to take the corner, which left our players very annoyed, Lawrence making his feelings clear to Kevin Friend after the game. Henderson even wanted to run up and have a go! But no, just wanted to pile on the misery more for us. I hope we don't see him again!


Another issue I'd like to raise is the poor performance level of Erik Huseklepp recently, maybe it's down to stamina or fatigue, but he hasn't been performing very well of late, giving away possession, poor passing, he just seems off the boil. But no one gives him stick, unlike a certain Dave Kitson who gets just about every curse word under the sun shouted at him, his work rate is phenomenal, he's always chasing balls, trying to get involved in play, granted sometimes it isn't fantastic, but at least he is trying! Him and Futacs are a good little partnership, maybe if we got another striker who isn't just a 6ft + tower with no pace we could utilise that system in a 4-3-3, but until then it'll be them two.

So that broke out fine home record and the start of a very very difficult few weeks. By the end of February we shall know if we are in a relegation battle or aiming to push into the play-off's. Games against Cardiff, Hull and Ipswich will be tough games, but hopefully we can at least get something out of these games, even if it's a draw.

Play Up Pompey, hope we can get in someone in on loan soon after the departure of the legend that is Herman Hreiðarsson, one of the last remaining squad members from the 2008 FA Cup winning side. He has been such a character in his time at the club, may I wish him the best of luck at Coventry, and we hope to see him again in the future!
I'll leave the blog today with a picture of his antics from the FA Cup celebrations!