May 23 – Big money transfer spending does not necessarily bring success, as Louis van Gaal found out to his personal cost at Manchester United this season. The CIES Football Observatory has ranked clubs in the Big 5 Leagues according to the average transfer cost per player fielded.
The ranking again shows the size of the mountain scaled by Leicester City in winning the Premier League – the club had the third lowest transfer expenditure in the league with an average of €2.7 million per player. In contrast Newcastle United has a transfer cost of €7.9 million per player and were relegated – they were also bottom of the CIES table.
This translates to a positive performance against their numerical ranking by transfer cost of +17. For Newcastle United it is -10. In the four other major European championships, the most positive and negative gaps were for Las Palmas (+6) and Valencia (-9) in Spain; Angers (+8) and Marseille (-10) in France; Mainz (+10) and Hannover (-9) in Germany; and for Empoli (+7) and Palermo (-5) in Italy.
Not surprisingly Europe’s giant clubs had the highest average transfer costs per player. Real Madrid top this list (€32.2 million per player), followed by Manchester City (€27.5 million), Paris St-Germain (€27.0 million), Manchester United (€26.8 million) and Barcelona (€23.7 million). Champions League finalist Atlético Madrid ranks only 13th (€8.8 million).
See the rankings at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2015/151/en/
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