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In a modern footballing world which is becoming defined by obscene financial investments, the need for numerical validation has never been more pertinent. The exponential rise in access to an abundance of statistical data – ranging from something as fundamental as appearances to something as futile as expected goals – has not been manufactured to justify the decision-making of the super-rich, but it’s inadvertently taken on that responsibility anyway.
When a new signing is touted, especially attackers commanding hefty transfer fees, the gaze of journalists, pundits and supporters is naturally drawn towards the number of goals and assists they have provided down the years. It’s an impulse reaction which has been embedded into the stream of consciousness amongst almost all footballing spectators.
So, when reports emerged detailing Manchester United’s devious plot to hijack Manchester City’s seemingly inevitable deal to secure Alexis Sanchez’s services last January, it was commonplace to find astonished supporters double-taking the words they digested as if they were actively refusing to allow their elation to spill overboard.
And why not go a bit delirious with Sanchez-contracted fever? The Chile international had scored 80 goals and provided 45 assists during his career in north London, many of them solo efforts of individual genius, some mazy dribbles which bamboozled entire defensive units and others exquisite long-range thunderbolts which arrowed into the desired corner with laser-like precision.
Anticipation was eventually replaced with glittery-eyed awe when Sanchez announced himself onto the scene in a moment of cinematic elegance while perched on a seat in front of a piano, tapping the keys to ‘glory glory Man United’ in what promised to be a watershed moment in Manchester. United not only believed they had deprived their noisy neighbour and chief title rival of an incredibly gifted player, they considered this as an act of revenge for Carlos Tevez’s infamous and unforgivable decision to swap red for blue almost ten years before.
With an unrivalled statistical record in Premier League football few would have questioned the decision to offer Sanchez a £350,000 per week contract. This was, after all, a known goal and assist getter with rich experience at every level of the game. What could possibly go wrong?
As the 30-year-old prepares to return to north London on Sunday ahead of a vital encounter in the race for the top-four, the extent of his subsequent demise can be revealed through, that’s right, congratulations, you guessed it: statistical information. Read below to claim your prize…
It’s what the people want and need. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Watch the video below to find out what Jesse Lingard is like off the pitch in the latest Match Of The Bae with Emma Conybeare…
United supporters are acutely aware of Sanchez’s tepid form and statistical return to boot, but the full extent of the colossal flop’s financial burden is only revealed when his salary is crunched together with a few key numbers.
In this case, Marcus Rashford, a hungry, promising, relatively unproven but ultimately superior talent – on current form – has been used to compare how the club are distributing their resources to two players at opposite ends of their footballing careers.
By the time the fixture kicks off on Sunday, Sanchez will have earned just shy of 59 weeks’ wages at United, which equates to a staggering £23.9m; Rashford, by contrast, has earned just £2.65m. I use the word just incredibly loosely. It’s unlikely that the 20-year-old needs to think twice about buying literally anything but, in the context of the modern economic climate, he’s earning a pretty modest salary for a player of his ability.
But the damning indictments which illuminate the extent of United’s financial leakage lie within how much each player has taken home per minute played and how much each goal has set the club back.
Since Sanchez signed on January 22nd, Rashford has scored 14 goals in all competitions, nine more than the £350k per week player has managed during the same period. Dividing Rashford’s earnings by his goal scoring return shows that each goal has cost the club roughly £189k; Sanchez’s goal scoring exploits, on the other hand, have set the club back £4.58 million a pop.
Nobody could have envisaged the scale of the catastrophe which has unfolded for the club, but what Ed Woodward, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and the rest of United’s bigwigs can do is to learn a fundamental lesson: the inflated model is broken beyond repair and a solution needs to be found.
That solution may well lie within the implementation of a more organic system of internal promotion. Rashford is firmly within the formative stages of his career. Exuberant, lightning-quick and innately talented, he is a wonderkid with one of the highest ceilings in the game and, if United can produce just a couple of talents every season who are anything close to his level, the need to offer such unfathomable wages will likely diminish.
This simply cannot go on. Sanchez provides a particularly unique and complex hero-to-zero tale but, regardless of the reasons behind his failure at Old Trafford, his spell proves that a line has been crossed and it is time for a re-think in how clubs approach the transfer market.
You’ll win nothing with kids, but you might save enough money to establish a small football club on the moon by favouring youth over experience.