Will We Ever Spend £5 Million Or More On One Player Again?

By my reckoning (and I could be wrong here), we've not spent £5 million or more on a single player since John Hartson almost fifteen years ago, which I find absolutely astounding now.

I keep thinking I must have this wrong? Surely someone else has come in that I've forgotten about?

The closest to that was Scott Brown, who cost us a shade under £4.5 million, right?

 

Broony was £4.4m, closest since then was Marc Antoine Fortune at £3.8m.

If all goes well I think we will. Depends on a variety of factors though.

 

Probably not.

Anyone 5 million over would demand wages beyond us.

 

Scott Brown has been our most expensive signing for years yeah. Fortune cost £3.8m.

Id say we will eventually when the right player comes along.

 

Aye but only if the board are 100% sure that it's a solid investment.

 

There's no such thing as a 100% sure-thing though. Even the top clubs * up now & then.

 

How much was VoH? About £3.7 or something like that. Just out of interest never believed he was £5m.

It's mad that we haven't- even teams in comparable positions to ourselves have done this. Weird thinking we spent more on players back then and in the 90's, than now - where the market is inflated.

It's like Scottish football has had a stroke and totally stalled in a period of time, whilst everyone else has went on living and improving.

Edit: I wouldn't even have said John Hartson was a 'solid' investment to be honest. He was injury prone and a big risk. We ended up getting 2 real good years out of him. The rest he was overweight or injured. Still love him though. Chris Sutton aswell and Neil Lennon would have been risks. No sell on value, aging and Sutton was dire at Chelsea. Thankfully they fared well.

 

Even the 2.5-3 million pound signings that were standard for us a couple of years back are being replaced by the 1 million pound signings .

As for 5 mill +, i just dont see it with the current board.

Problem is 5 million pound players will often be fairly proven and already attracting interest from the bigger leagues so we will struggle to offer them the wages they are looking for . With our wage structure we need to get them in before they become 5 million pound players. Ikechi Anya is a prime example.

 

A £5m player will want much higher wages than we can offer, and that's the main problem. The fact is, when we signed John Hartson we could pay him what he could get elsewhere. A £5million player can get more elsewhere now.

I think we will spend that kind of money again if/when Football restructures itself and our income changes. The important thing just now is to keep the club stable until we can consistently get higher income.

 

once the lying king starts to spend his ''£30m warchest'', then it's possible we could spend £5m on a player.

well, you never know. :icon_mrgreen:

 

How much was Juarez again?

 

The boss said that we can spend up to 8m on a single player if the value is there for us. But to answer the question I would be surprised if we even spent 3.5 on a transfer fee in this day and age.

 

Aye, that is very noticeable. Even under the 'transition' period of WGS, we still paid fairly decently both transfers and wages on 'marquee' signings such as Keane, VoH, Gravesen, Jarosik, Nakamura etc.

 

Day Late Record said 4 but i think the fee was closer to 1

 

1 sounds more accurate. There was always a bit of confusion about that transfer.

 

It had the potential to be about £3.4m if I remember right, it never did because he failed here though.

 

By the way Kennedy and Collins have spoke last few days I don't know if we will even spend this summer!

 

I am certain that we will spend something. I would say that they are probably trying not to get the customers hopes up so that we will be happy with what we get. I am certain that we will again have a minus net spend. We will get money for Virgil and half will be reinvested back in. Its sad that we put up with it but it is how it is.

 

Of course we will , once you factor in inflation in the coming years ..

 

Aye suppose your 100% correct