Andy Carroll proudly took his place among the most expensive footballers of all time on Monday evening. His value is, at best, debatable. It is certainly unprecedented.
The former Newcastle striker is the eighth most expensive footballer of all time and the fifth most expensive striker. The list of the top ten football transfers is populated by blue chip stars who were proven talents before their moves, with the exception of Carroll who has a short, and mixed, track record.
PlayerFee (€m)AppearancesGoalsAppearancesGoalsAppearancesGoalsAppearancesGoals Minor Leagues Before TransferMajor Leagues Before TransferNew ClubFurther Clubs Ronaldo93.5196845048 Ibrahimovic66114511578029161912 Kaka64592319370279 Torres58407276140 Crespo555224168108492016044 Carroll4072211911 Villa4080382391401814 Robinho4911146101254114217 Vieri48.3792595521441035714 Shevchenko46.4117602081274895013 Berbatov46.44926224968440 Record
Carroll is unique in this company in having played fewer than 100 games. Cristiano Ronaldo who was outrageously good at Manchester United and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, with 196 senior games for Malmo, Ajax, Juventus and Internazionale, are the next least experienced players to move for over €40m. Ronaldo is a world phenomenon, bettered only by Messi and it’s fair to say Zlatan was an established star before making his move to Barcelona. Whether he was value for money at €66m is arguable, but he was averaging better than a goal every other game in Italy for five seasons in Serie A, winning the title in each season though one was later rescinded. In other words he had a bit of history to support his valuation.
http://www.thefreekick.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/andycarroll600-300x200.jpgAndy Carroll has 11 goals in the top flight of English football. That tally was achieved rapidly in 19 games in the Premier League but it’s a very short trend on which to build a massive valuation. Extending the trend backwards to include all senior games at any level and Carroll’s record is less impressive with 32 goals in 91 games. Some of those appearances were when he was still quite young (a handful as a teenager) but it’s not unreasonable to suggest that a player is assessed over a longer timeframe than six months before deciding to spend €40m on him. His record is marginally better than Robinho’s at the time of joining Manchester City and marginally worse than Kaka’s when he joined Real Madrid. The latter is not an out and out striker, the former hardly represented value for money but he was, in any event, a far more established player than Carroll.
Another common characteristic of the rest of the elite group of players to command such high transfer fees is that they all had significant international and European experience by the time of their big money move. The attacking players named above were all more experienced than Carroll but they seemed to accumulate that exposure to elite football much quicker. Including the non-attacking players, Figo, Zidane and Buffon, reinforces the point. Buffon had won a UEFA Cup at Parma, Zidane and Figo were vastly experienced and trophy-laden international footballers when they made their biggest moves. Andy Carroll has one substitute appearance for England at Wembley and a couple of minutes in the UEFA Cup against Palermo from 4 seasons ago. He doesn’t just buck the trend, he reverses it completely.
Potential
There is a defence of the price paid for Carroll that it is based on potential and that his statistics can’t be that great yet because he’s only been playing senior football regularly for two seasons. The difficulty with those arguments is that the price involved demands an instant return. Furthermore, there was little evidence to suggest an extraordinary potential in the recent past. Unlike Wayne Rooney, who moved for a considerably lower fee having already dominated at international level, Carroll wasn’t a teenage superstar. He made 8 apperances for England Under 19s and 5 for the Under 21s. That’s an illustration of talent but it’s hardly the grounds for a record transfer fee for Liverpool. The likes of Connor Wickham has been far more prolific for underage English teams recently; Jeffers, Shearer, Bent and Cort were far more productive in past years. It’s clear that scoring goals at that level is not a risk-free barometer of future success, but if you’re buying a player on potential alone then what other criteria do you have to make that assessment?
Fee Recouped
Liverpool will point to the fee received for Fernando Torres as justification for their expenditure on Andy Carroll but the events are not co-dependent. The price received from Chelsea for Torres represented a decent return for Liverpool but they sold a player with the best goals per minute average in the Premier League. Torres has scored 147 goals in Spain and England in 316 appearances. That’s a significantly better average than Carroll has achieved in his career thus far. The real comparison Liverpool fans should be making is between the money they spent on Torres in 2007 versus the fee for Carroll in 2011. In some respects that’s not a fair assessment because you don’t have to be as successful as Torres has been to justify a big fee. But there is a danger of forgetting just how expensive Carroll has been if the only yardstick is Torres moving to Chelsea. At €40m you don’t want moderate success, you need to be breaking records.
At Atlético Madrid Torres managed to score 82 goals in 214 appearances, an average of a goal every 0.38 games. He had turned 23 a couple of months before leaving for Liverpool. In a year less Carroll has accumulated less than half those goals in less than half those appearances. He has an average of a goal every 0.35 games. If you exclude time spent in the second tier for both players Carroll’s average improves but the dataset is tiny: 11 goals in 19 games. Torres scored 75 times in 174 La Liga games. The average may be lower but the sheer volume of goals Torres had accumulated by the time he joined Liverpool is incomparable to Carroll’s haul. And Carroll is almost double the price.
Much to Prove
No transfer is a guaranteed success and the absurd amounts of money in professional sport make it hard to justify phrases such as “bargain” and “value for money” etc. However, transfer market inflation, reinvigorated by Real Madrid recently, does not remove the need to acquire the best resources possible for the smallest possible outlay. Andy Carroll could certainly have been purchased cheaper. His fee is hugely bloated by his current form and it’s hard to argue against the suspicion he was bought solely on the back of this season’s performances. If his potential before now was that obvious then surely a modest fee in the summer would have delivered a much better bargain.
David Villa cost Barcelona the same amount of money in the summer. A move to Merseyside would not have interested him so he’s not the one that got away. He is the typical big money signing though: a long track record of success and he has rewarded Barcelona already. He might not be worth as much by the end of his contract but his success, while not assured was certainly expected. Liverpool have speculated on both performances and a resale value. It’s a huge risk to take for the fee involved.