Blackburn bid for Ronaldinho & Beckham

[sheffruss 10]

Blades should bid for Jairzinho

[shoreham4eva 10]

Blackburn have today made an attempt to resign Bentley who has been made surplus to requirements at Spurs, however they are up against favourites Newcastle at 2/1 and Sunderland 8/1.

[HeadingNorth 11]

Leeds United won the title well in the 91/92 season, without spending shed loads of cash.

 

I'd forgotten about them. They bought Cantona, but he didn't cost an awful lot did he?

[taxman 12]

I'd forgotten about them. They bought Cantona, but he didn't cost an awful lot did he?

 

Picked him up for peanuts after Sheff Weds decided they didn't want him :hihi:

[HeadingNorth 11]

Picked him up for peanuts after Sheff Weds decided they didn't want him :hihi:

 

Didn't he refuse to trial for them because it would have meant waiting a week .. or something?

[taxman 12]

Didn't he refuse to trial for them because it would have meant waiting a week .. or something?

 

Something like that...they trialed him indoors but needed to see him out on grass but he wouldn't hang around.

 

 

Similar happened with Peter Beardsley at Man U when Atkinson was manager. He'd only just arrived from the astroturf of the US and hadn't found his feet on grass, Atkinson took one look and didn't rate him. Bad call.

[plekhanov 10]

Man Utd, Blackburn, Arsenal, Chelsea.

 

 

It's a trivial statistic though. Dozens of clubs won the same competition when it had a different name. Man Utd got lucky in that the floods of money came into the game at exactly the moment they finally had a manager and team capable of winning the league; if Sky had entered the lists ten years earlier, Liverpool would have become the wealthiest club in football; ten years earlier than that and it might have been Leeds or even Derby County, who knows.

 

Blackburn bought a title with millions; Chelsea with hundreds of millions. Arsenal were the last team to do anything other than buy it outright; and may, quite possibly, remain the last team for ever. And even they were rich, just not as rich as some others. The last time to win a title without having the backing of wealth (from either a rich owner, or a large following due to earlier successes) were Everton - or arguably, Nottingham Forest.

I don't think you can accurately say United have bought their titles, if you go back and check the figures you'll see that they were constantly outspend by their rivals:

 

From 1992-97 A period Uniteds net spend was £2.5m which is less than West Ham, WBA, Tottenham, Mid/brough, Birmingham, Sunderland, Bolton, Man-City, Wolves, Blackburn, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Leeds, Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle & Everton.

 

Aston Villa, Leeds, Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle & Everton had net spends of over £20m in that time completely dwarfing United's spending.

 

The nearest United came to 'buying' titles was between 1997-2002 when with a net spend of £60.5m United were much nearer the top in spending 2nd infact behind Leeds but Chelsea, Fulham & Liverpool were all close spending over £50m.

 

2002-07 United were 4th in the spending league behind Tottenham, Liverpool & Chelsea (who spend over £200m more than Liverpool in 2nd place witha mere £77m.

 

2006-2011 United are 14th on the spending league with a net spend of £14m and have been outspent by Manchester City, Tottenham, Sunderland, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Stoke City, Fulham, West Ham, Wolves, Chelsea, Everton, West Bromwich Albion and Bolton.

 

Overall from 1992-2010 United are 5th in the transfer league behind City, Chelsea, Tottenham & Liverpool.

 

I think people get a distorted view of United's spending as they remember the big signings like breaking the Uk transfer record to sign Andy Cole for £7m but forget that in that season United sold Ince for the same amount and also sold Mark Hughes, Dion Dublin & Keith Gillespie and had a net spend of -£4m.

 

All my figures come from transferleague.co.uk.