The Real Football Man

“Football, It’s a funny old game” that may well have been the case but now you need to swap the word funny for expensive. I go away for the week and the transfer market has gone into overdrive, are we soon to witness the point when the sport we all love finally eats itself.

The transfer market is arguably an outdated term in itself as clubs are no longer buying the equivalent of fruit and veg with some slightly dodgy looking batteries for a pound. No, it may as well be renamed “transfer harrods” with the amount of money that is being spent as of late.

And the fun has only just begun as if Neymar does make the move from Barcelona to Paris then the domino effect that comes with it will be a joy to behold for the next couple of weeks. Liverpool fans will be sitting uneasily as Philippe Coutinho lies in waiting to join the Catalan giants for again what is an incredibly inflated.

Jurgen Klopp is playing a risky strategy in that he only sees willing to sign two new players this summer with absolutely nothing in the way of a backup plan, great if that comes to fruition but a disaster if it does not.

If you were a Liverpool fan and you were told back in May when 4th place was secured that you would be spending nearly £150m in the off season you would be rubbing your hands with glee at the prospect of what players were to arrive at Anfield.

But as the realisation then dawns that could only going to get you two players, one who missed the whole second half of last season and the other who a lot of people have never heard of before this window open (and if they had then they are lying) then the prospect of all that money spent loses its shine somewhat.

Cast your mind back to 2013 when Tottenham were given the equivalent of birthday money from your Grandma as they sold Gareth Bale to Real Madrid. Depending on what figure you believe it was in the region of in and around £100m.

Now we all know that the spending of that money on the “Not so Magnificent Seven” is much maligned and well publicised but the fact you could actually get seven players just four years ago compared to the scenario where you can just about get one just shows how far we have come in such a relatively short space of time.

And as for Spurs, unfortunately, our hopes of signing that young Argentinian defender look set to be dashed as he opts for PSG instead. I guess you could say that the “Foyth Signs Saga” has come to a close. (ask your Mum)

I keep hearing and am no doubt guilty of using the term “in today’s market” as a point of reference for transfer fees but the scale has now gone so off the charts that is in near impossible to compare and contrast two separate deals.

Someone told me on twitter the other day as if it was blind fact that “In today’s market, If Lukaku has moved for £75m then Neymar has to be worth £200m” When I told him that release clauses are not indicative of market value and are used as a deterrent, the man quickly retracted the statement.

This, unfortunately, is the level of stupidity us bastions of football knowledge are up against right now, stupidity from the clubs is trickling down to the fans and we’ve still got another four weeks or so of this transfer madness.

I’m not going to lie, I’m bored of talking transfers and I’m glad that relative competitive action has returned. I will, however, use that term ‘action’ slightly loosely as I had to make do with watching Celtic vs Rosenborg on Wednesday and then Everton take on DFS Furniture Store or whatever they were called on Thursday, not classics by any means but right now I’ll take any kind of on pitch action*

*The Real Football Man does not do Women’s football – before you sharpen the pitchforks, hear me out. If you liked Stand Up Comedy you would not go out of your way to watch sub standard acts, therefore I will apply that analogy to this as well. No further comments

Anyhow by the time you would have read this we’ll be just two weeks away from the start of the season, it’s time to dig deep as we’re very nearly at the off season finishing line. Quite frankly if I hear about Ivan Perisic being linked with Manchester United one more time, people are going to get hurt.

Until next week.