The idea behind the new Chelsea ownership’s transfer plans was simple. Buy low, sell high.
Sadly, it doesn’t always work like that. It’s hard to buy low when you’re Chelsea, for starters. Clubs know you’ve got money, and we got fleeced on a number of deals simply because the sellers knew how much we needed to get a deal done.
Then there’s the other issue – no matter what you pay for a player, their value isn’t going to increase unless they’re playing well. And it’s very hard for them to play well in a team full of new faces. So in the main, very few (if any) of our major buys would currently get near what we paid for them if we were to sell them now.
The big exception
The great exception to all this, of course, is Cole Palmer. Here the sporting directors did it right – they got him for a low price, and he’s since played so exceptionally well that his value has increased.
It’s impossible to get it right every time of course, but their hit rate so far has been scandalously low. The CIES Football Observatory, which estimates players value, claims that Palmer’s value is now £100m, more than double the £40m we paid.
The problem is of course, that this is not an increase we really want to realise. If a player is doing well and going up in value, we’d rather keep them in the team.
Just imagine the scenes if we sold Palmer this summer, no matter the price tag…