If football was a patient in a hospital bed, doctors would struggle to find a diagnosis. There are countless problems in the modern game and rarely, if ever, can they be solved with a quick-fix pill. 

One area that sits near the top of the list is… you guessed it… recruitment. 

Football clubs across the spectrum struggle with recruitment. With a limited pool of talent and an infinite number of suitors, it’s a classic case of too little supply and high demand. And we all know what happens when that’s the case… well, player’s prices rise to the moon and seldom fall back down.

Think about it. It’s no secret the average transfer fee in the Premier League is rising every year. Twenty years ago, the record transfer in the English top-flight was Rio Ferdinand from Leeds United to Manchester United for £29,100,000. In January 2023, Chelsea broke the transfer record after signing Enzo Fernandez for £106,700,000.

And in the same transfer, both Moises Caicedo (Brighton to Chelsea) and Declan Rice (West Ham to Arsenal) transferred for over £100,000,000.

The graph below shows the exponential rise in record transfer costs in the 2000s. 

Transfer prices are on the rise…

Indeed, the rise of transfer prices isn’t just a result of supply and demand. As is always the case, regulation and policy also make a mark. 

In this case, the Bosman rule - initiated in December 1995 after a five-year legal battle - changed the nature of transfer fees. Before the Bosman rule, players weren’t allowed to leave their club unless they were formally released or sold, even if their current contract had expired. Once the Bosman rule was put into place, players could leave a club on a free transfer as soon as the contract’s lifeline ended.

In turn, the Bosman rule had an unintended consequence. Once enacted, it got rid of limits on players from within the EU, opening up a competitive international market where wealthier clubs had access to a wider pool of talent. As a result, transfer fees ramped up as clubs fought for the player’s services. 

Interestingly, during an interview with The Guardian, Jean-Marc Bosman - the player responsible for pushing this rule forward - admitted that: "Now the 25 or so richest clubs transfer players for astronomical sums and smaller clubs cannot afford to buy at those prices. So the 25 pull further and further away from the rest, deepening the gap between big and small. That was not the aim of the Bosman ruling.”

Other factors have contributed to the rise of transfer costs, none less than clubs getting wealthier. With more and more eyes on the game, TV rights are on the rise. The Premier League has announced a record £6.7bn TV rights deal with Sky and TNT Sports. With this, clubs purchasing power has dramatically risen in line with transfer records. 

But, despite the increased circulation of cash in the game, it’s tough to argue the transfer decisions have been better than they were previously. That’s because, with so much competition, modern recruitment can be expensive, rash, and ineffective.

The Premier League’s haphazard recruit

But… how is it possible for expensive recruitment to be ineffective? 

It’s largely a symptom of owners becoming aware of the role that perception and PR play in the modern game. In recent years, many on-and-off the field decisions, decisions have been based on how these decisions are perceived by the game’s key stakeholders - the fans and media. 

Take Chelsea as an example. Since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital’s takeover in May 2022, The Blues have gone beyond the €1 billion mark in just three transfer windows. Many of the players they signed - including Cole Palmer, Moises Caicedo, and Nicolas Jackson - are largely unproven Premier League players. This, coupled with the exodus of the old guard of Chelsea players, highlights the club’s desire to freshen their image, rather than win games. As a result, they finished 12th in the 2022-23 season. Despite the lavish summer of spending, it was Chelsea’s worst Premier League finish since 1993-94 and their worst in a 38-game season. 

Boehly, among others, is aware of the role that PR plays in the modern game. Recruitment decisions aren’t guided by purely football-focused metrics, meaning that on-field results are impacted negatively.

Earlier in the decade, Manchester United followed a similar haphazard approach to recruitment. A strategy that is based on appeasing fans in the short term. On paper, high-profile signings like Angel Dí Maria look the part, but he failed to find his role in the team because, quite frankly, he didn’t have one. 

This has been a theme in Manchester United’s recruitment of late. Players like Donny van de Beek (£35m), Alex Telles (£15.4m) and Edison Cavani (free) are just a handful of other players who were part of the club’s desire to appease their fanbase. It’s difficult to argue that these signings and others were tactically grounded or part of a wider recruitment philosophy.

As with Chelsea, the owners of Manchester United are acutely aware of perception - perhaps even more so than their rivals. The Red Devils are the only club in the Premier League that is listed on an exchange - the New York Stock Exchange - which means that every decision made by the club is hyperanalysed. And, often, the bigger, the better. 

Interestingly, one empirical analysis showed that “on-pitch” performance i.e., points per game before and after a stock market listing only marginally improves performance - from 1.77 to 1.82 average points per game. That’s one additional draw per season. So, despite the increased funding, it’s futile for a club’s on-pitch performance. 

While we can only speculate, we bet it’s got something to do with flashy and unstructured decision making to appease external stakeholders…

It’s not all doom and gloom…

Other clubs, like Liverpool, have taken a different approach which has produced better results. In our analysis of Michael Edwards’ strategy, the club’s former director of football, it’s clear that it’s possible to recruit cheaply and achieve astonishing results. 

Edwards rarely, if ever, made recruitment decisions based on anything other than footballing ability. Believe it or not, Mohamed Salah - one of Edwards’ recruits - wasn’t a popular signing at the time. The Egyptian winger had a less-than-ideal spell at Chelsea so it’s understandable why eyebrows were raised - including Jurgen Klopp’s. Yet, with a team of statisticians that analysed footballing performance, Edwards made the call to sign him from Roma. With Salah’s £34.3 million price tag, it’s safe to say that the Reds have got their money’s worth.

Brentford’s strategy is another example of recruitment based on sound and objective footballing principles, resulting in cost-effective signings. Part of their strategy is to ensure that their incoming signings complement their current squad. Moreover, everyone involved in Brentford’s recruitment meticulously understands the criteria that they’re looking for. Similarly to Edwards at Liverpool, there are core principles that guide decision-making around recruitment.

In an interview with The Athletic, technical director Lee Dykes says: “We always consider the immediate units around the individual, but also where it lies within the squad the balance of the starting XI. If you sign a left-winger, you should be thinking about the right-winger.” 

In practical terms, this could be like signing a forward player that’s good in the air because your current centre-back has good ball distribution from the back. A great example of this is that Brentford have essentially had three very different strikers in recent years - Neal Maupay, Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney. Yet, they all worked brilliantly, because they fit the tactical make-up of the squad at the time.

With this approach - a recruitment strategy based on footballing principles - Brentford can buy players like Watkins, Maupay and Said Benrahma for a collective £5 million. And, even better, sell them on for £70 million.

It’s about time clubs like Manchester United and Chelsea take a leaf out of Brentford’s book and realise that bigger isn’t always better.