Build a team or sell the star? How much does selling your star actually hurt?
West Ham are pushing for a Champions League spot thanks - in part - Declan Rice. How big of a blow would it be for the Hammers to lose him this summer? It may not be as much as you'd think.
Manchester United will enter matchweek 32 of the Premier League season second in the table. Unfortunately, even if they win they win the rest of their matches this season Premier League rules state that United can’t finish higher in the table than Chelsea because the London club spent over £200 million in last summer’s transfer market while United did not.
That is the rule right? That’s certainly what every fan made it sound like last summer?
It turns out that is not in fact a rule. The only “rule” that comes with the transfer market is that most of the money spent on transfer fees is completely wasted.
As Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski write in Soccernomics:
Unfortunately much of the money thrown around in the transfer market is wasted. In fact, the net amount that almost any club spends on transfer fees bears little relation to where it finishes in the league.
Each club’s net outlay on transfers only accounts for 16 percent in their total variation of league position. In other words, taken over many years the mere fact of being a ‘buying club’ didn’t help a team perform significantly better than a ‘selling club’
Kuper and Szymanski go on to explain it’s actually wages that matter, and having more money to spend on wages attracts the better players keeping the “buying clubs” at the top.
Using league position to judge this might be a little flawed. In 2003-04 Everton finished 17th before selling Wayne Rooney to Manchester United who finished third. At 17th there’s a lot of room for Everton to move up. There’s a lot less room for United.
Nevertheless their point about “selling clubs” does hold.
The transfer market is essentially divided into two groups, “buying clubs” and “selling clubs.” Every club does both buying and selling but it’s more about who’s being bought and sold.
Buying clubs are the big boys. They poach the top players from the mid level clubs. They’re the ones that spend the record breaking fees. When buying clubs sell players it’s either because they’re done with them, it didn’t work out, or the player wants to leave to get more playing time. You’re almost never getting the same fee that you paid for a player when you sell him.
Selling clubs are the exact opposite. They develop young talent into stars and then sell them to the big boys for record fees. They use that money to re-invest in young players in hopes of developing the next superstar. Often times they do.
It is extremely hard to go from being a selling club to a buying one. When clubs try to do it it often ends in horribly (looking at you early oughts Borussia Dortmund and Leeds). The key is knowing which one of these groups you belong to, accepting it, and using that as your basis for planning.
For years this was really simple. Most clubs were struggling financially. The big clubs had money. If you developed a good player who could be sold for a good fee, that fee alone could keep the lights on at the club for an entire year. If a big club came calling for a player, small and mid-size clubs didn’t have a choice. They simply had to sell.
This has gotten a bit cloudier in recent years. Don’t get me wrong, the buying clubs are still made up of the same teams as before, but the influx of TV money has now made even the small clubs completely financially solvent.
This can get teams into trouble when they think they’re no longer in the “selling club” category and change how they operate. Now that they don’t need the money they no longer want to sell that superstar. They’d rather keep him and try to build a team around him. This is usually not the right way to go and sometimes it can be too late when a team realizes that they need to sell.
This brings us to two ‘selling clubs’ and two potential superstars: Borussia Dortmund’s Jadon Sancho and West Ham’s Declan Rice.
Both clubs have a wealth of young talent around their cornerstone players and would prefer to hold on to them. Both clubs would (most likely) be better off selling them.
As a Manchester United fan I would hope they come to this realization and sell them for very fair prices. But that’s because in my world I believe everyone should be trying to make Manchester United better. Unfortunately for me Borussia Dortmund and West Ham United live in world’s where they’re looking out for Borussia Dortmund and West Ham first.
Looking out for Dortmund or West Ham they should still sell these players. That doesn’t mean sell at all cost. They should still command hefty transfer fees because these players are worth hefty transfer fees, but they also shouldn’t demand so much money that it prices them out of a move either.
Because the overwhelming majority of the time, selling your superstar doesn’t really hurt you long term.
Selling clubs are selling clubs because they exist. That’s pretty important. They don’t sell their good players and fade off into oblivion. They sell their good players and then suddenly have more good players to sell while still either competing for titles or in the Champions League places.
Selling clubs know where they sit in the pecking order. They know they can’t buy the best players so they either need to find gems before the big boys do or develop it themselves. Thus they devote a significant amount of their resources to scouting and player development.
Most of the times teams that sell their best players don’t get worse at all, but better. There might be a one year drop but overall it turns out positive. As we mentioned before, Everton finished 17th before they sold Wayne Rooney. The following year they finished fourth - their best ever Premier League finish. The next year they dipped back to 11th but then went on a run of eight consecutive top eight finishes.
For Everton, having £35 million was far more valuable than having Wayne Rooney. They took that money and invested it in a lot of young developing players who became the core of the team for the next decade.
Leicester City came out of nowhere to win the title in 2016. They sold N’Golo Kante the following summer and dropped to 12th - a big drop but not entirely unexpected for a team that had typically been found at the bottom of the table (they also went to the quarterfinals of the Champions League). A year later they climbed back to 9th, still significantly better than what this club used to be. That summer they sold their best player Riyad Mahrez yet once again they finished in 9th place.
A year after the departure of Mahrez Leicester sold their best centerback for a world record £80m fee, then they climbed to fifth in the table. Last season it was left back Ben Chilwell’s turn to depart, leaving for Chelsea in a £50 million deal. Leicester are currently third.
Anthony Martial lead Monaco in goals in 2014-15 when they finished third in Ligue 1. The club sold him to Manchester United the following season but stayed put in the table. A year later Kylian Mbappe broke out as he helped Monaco capture the league title. He departed for PSG and the loss hurt them so much they fell all the way to second the following year - partially because he’s Mbappe but much more because they sold him to a direct rival helping said rival get better.
A rash of departures followed over the next few years - Joao Moutinho, Thomas Lemar, Radamel Falcao (sell your staR, not all your good players) - causing Monaco to dip for a few years, but they’re back in third now.
Sporting Lisbon sold their captain Bruno Fernandes last season and didn’t sign anyone to replace him this summer. They’re currently six points clear with eight games to play as they push to win their first league title since 2002.
History is filled with examples of team’s selling their star to a bigger club and being totally fine. Liverpool sold Coutinho and their attack got even better. Eden Hazard dragged Chelsea to third place before leaving for Real Madrid. If not for Hazard hitting absurd levels that final year, and Christian Pulisic dealing with injuries, they’ve done a pretty decent job replacing him.
That’s not to say there isn’t some risk behind this strategy. These clubs stay relevant because they’re so good at discovering and developing talent, but that just means they have to keep doing that.
Southampton didn’t plunge down the table because they sold Virgil Van Dijk. They plunged down the table because they were selling everybody (Adam Lallana, Nathaniel Clyne, Toby Alderweireld, Morgan Schneiderlin, Sadio Mane, and then Van Dijk). They kept grinding out top half finishes in the middle of the decade because they kept unearthing more and more top end talent. Once they stopped developing top of the line players and merely 'really good’ players they took a plunge. Even then, they’ll probably be back to mid-table in a year or two.
As mentioned before, it’s really difficult to move between the two categories, and thinking you’ve moved from one category to the other could spell disaster. Tottenham were a selling club right on through selling Gareth Bale to Real Madrid. That move ultimately paved the way for the club’s most successful spell in the Premier League era.
That’s when they decided to no longer be a selling club, the problem was they weren’t a buying club either. They simply stood put. They had a good run but now their window has closed and things are starting to unravel. Maybe they manage to steady the ship, but there’s a good chance that things get significantly worse for Tottenham before they get better.
This is what Borussia Dortmund have to be wary of. When it comes to selling clubs they are the elite.
The modern iteration (post 2005) of Borussia Dortmund have always been a selling club and it’s never really hurt them. They dropped below Bayern Munich because they sold the best player in the league and their third or fourth best player to their direct rivals. They dropped to seventh a year after Robert Lewandowski left simply because of horrible luck - expected points had them third in the table.
Since then they’ve been a steady top four team. That’s despite selling the likes of Mats Hummels, Ilkay Gundogan, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Ousmane Dembele, Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang, and Christian Pulisic. It didn’t matter who left, they always stuck around and even started mounting some more serious title challenges. They just keep finding new talent.
That changed last summer. Money has flown into the Bundesliga. Dortmund are better off then they’ve ever been. They don’t need player sales to cover all their operating costs. Additionally, last summer honorary Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness criticized BVB’s transfer strategy as he tried to defend why Bayern easily win the league every year - because BVB keep selling their best players.
For all those reasons, Dortmund decided that they would sell their players, but only on their terms. So when superstar Jadon Sancho wanted a move they demanded an astronomical fee.
That fee never came and Dortmund were able to (finally) hold on to one of their superstars and continue building their exciting young team. How has that helped them? They went out of the Champions League in the quarterfinals once again and domestically they’ve dropped to fifth in the Bundesliga, seven points outside of the top four. There’s a very real chance they won’t qualify for the Champions League next season.
Declan Rice had played every minute of West Ham’s surprisingly resurgent season until picking up an injury on England duty. It was believed that without Rice, West Ham would collapse. They’ve won both games without him.
Jadon Sancho’s 0.71 Np G+A per 90 is second best for Borussia Dortmund. He has started 21 of BVB’s 28 Bundesliga matches this season where they’ve posted a record of 10-3-8 (1.57 PPM). In the games without Sancho they’ve posted a record of 4-1-2 (1.86 PPM). That may not seem like much but that equates to a nine point difference over the 34 game Bundesliga season.
Now, both of those are extremely small sample sizes that lack a tremendous amount of context. But, none of this should really come as a surprise.
Football is a team game. It doesn’t really matter how good a player is when he’s just one of 11 on the pitch. Yes you need superstars to win a title or the Champions League but the rest of your team has to be damn good too.
Cristiano Ronaldo didn’t carry a mediocre United team to the title. He was the icing on the cake for a team that included Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tevez, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Michael Carrick etc. When he left (along with Tevez) United finished just a point out of first and won the title the next year.
A superstar will add a level to a team, not two or three. One player isn’t going to be the difference between a mid-table side and suddenly being a top four contender. Take Paul Pogba at Manchester United.
Since Pogba signed with United five years ago United have played 185 Premier League matches. The 1.96 points per match they win with him extrapolates to 74.39 points over a 38 game season. The 1.75 points without him would be 66.36 points. That’s the difference between a team maybe - depending on the season - being in the race for the top four, and a team that’s firmly in it. That’s substantial, but also not that much.
One superstar raises your level, but only a little bit. Adding Jadon Sancho alone wouldn’t vault Manchester United into title contenders. They’d still need Pogba, Bruno Fernandes, and Luke Shaw to continue to perform at their current levels, as well as the likes of Marcus Rashford, Mason Greenwood, Anthony Martial, Fred, and Scott McTominay to continue getting even better.
There are very rare occasions of one player just hitting a completely different level and single handily lifting their team more than a level or even more than two levels higher than they belong. Most of the time that happens over just a portion of the season (see Lingard, West Ham) and it’s never sustained over more than a single year.
The most famous example of this is Luis Suarez at Liverpool.
At the start of the decade Liverpool were - firmly - a just-above-mid-table side. They had finishes of 7th, 6th, 8th, and 7th before Suarez caught fire and lead them to a 2nd place finish. Suarez then left for Barcelona and Liverpool went right back down to 6th (and then 8th).
Suarez’s 1.31 Np G+A/90 was ridiculous but the drop-off from his departure didn’t have to be this stark.
Publicly available advanced data doesn’t go far back enough to tell us how much Liverpool overachieved on their underlying numbers in 2013-14 (if they did at all) but in 2014-15 their expected points were just two fewer than fourth place Manchester United. If anyone besides Jordan Henderson had come close to replicating their production from the year before and Liverpool could have snuck into the Champions League.
You can argue that Suarez’s presence is what allowed their numbers to be so high in the first place. Certainly from an assists standpoint and in terms of creating space for other players to score and that is certainly fair. That also just highlights the uniqueness of the case.
With Jadon Sancho Borussia Dortmund are about a top four team in the Bundesliga - a notch below Bayern Munich - and a team that should progress from their group in the Champions League. Without Jadon Sancho Borussia Dortmund are… a top four team in the Bundesliga that’s a notch below Bayern Munich and should progress from their group in the Champions League (though they very might be in the Europa League).
If West Ham manage to finish fourth this season and hold on to Declan Rice next season they’d be: a Pot 4 team that maybe, maybe if they get a good draw, can sneak out of their Champions League group or finish third and bounce to the Europa League while struggling to finish back in the top four again.
Without Declan Rice next season West Ham would be: a Pot 4 team that can maybe finish third in their group and will struggle to finish in the top four again.
If offers come in neither team should hesitate to sell those players. The sporting gain isn’t nearly enough to the financial gain that could be used to help the club maintain this current level long term. After all, you’re never actually done ‘re-building’ your team.
For Borussia Dortmund it’s simply next man up. Giovanni Reyna has already established himself in the first team. Reinier and Ansgar Knauff are starting to break through. Next season Youssoufa Moukoko will be even bigger and more ready for the Bundesliga. Add in the fact that the club will have money to buy another highly touted youngster.
West Ham might be a bit of different situation. They don’t have the track record when it comes to scouting, recruitment, and player development that Borussia Dortmund has but that shouldn’t be what stops them from cashing in. Sure they technically could just sell Rice at the end of next season when they’ve been bounced from Europe but at that point it might be too late.
In order to really ‘build’ this team they’d need to put some more good players around Rice, which, they don’t exactly have the money for. And If you haven’t noticed, besides Rice and Jarrod Bowen, West Ham aren’t exactly the youngest team around. If you wait another year you risk the rest of your squad aging out of their prime, leaving you with not enough good players and way too much rebuilding work to do. It’s far better to collect the £70-£90 million you can get for Rice now and use that on two or three players who can start settling in and ultimately become the spine of a team who’s ground floor is ‘consistently competing for a European spot.’
Football teams are more than one player. History has proven that selling your superstar doesn’t hurt you nearly as much as you think it does. Believing you can hold onto him for ‘one more year,’ often does.
Trust the data. Is your star really as important to your team as you think he is? If you even have to hesitate to say yes, take the money and reinvest it. The fans might hate you in the short term, but long term it’s the right move.
Insightful !
So much of the money spent in the transfer market is wasted, but selling a star player is rarely to the detriment of the selling club because they use the money to strengthen the team ... from the same transfer market where most of the money spent is wasted.