How to Spend No More Than £4.2M Per Player and Win

There is a team that teetered on the brink of bankruptcy in 2005. A payment from one of their biggest historic rivals helped save the club from administration.

In 2008, they finished 13^th in the league.

In 2011, they won the league.

In 2012, they won the league again.

That is a fairly impressive rebuilding effort, regardless of what league you are in. Three years from 13^th to league winners seems nearly impossible in modern football unless you spend like a sheikh, right?

Their highest transfer fee during the rebuilding period was £4.2M.

Cristian Tello and Four More Transfer Targets from Spain You Need to Know

Welcome back to another edition of transfer dossiers, where I scour the internet for stats on some of Europe’s most interesting and underrated players. If you are new to the series, you can find players from Germany here, France parts 1 and 2 here, and the first part of my Spanish dossiers here.

Today I’m going to examine two Barcelona players that have been heating up the transfer airwaves, and then look at a Madrid forward, one of Sociedad’s wonder kids, and finish with an unpolished gem from Bilbao.

Here we go!

5 Hot Transfer Targets from Spain That You Need to Know

Iago says, “Welcome.”

Welcome back to another set of transfer dossiers. To those who are new to this series, you can check up on the German targets here, plus France part 1 (including Payet, Mollo, and Cabella) and  and part 2 (including Ben Yedder, Alessandrini, and Boudebouz). The point of this series is to use statistics to help unearth excellent players that you might have never heard of before. By focusing on certain key metrics, it becomes possible to see players with high levels of potential well before they become stars, which in turn means you can sometimes find superb bargains in the transfer market.

The end of this piece includes a review of Liverpool target Iago Aspas, but first we’ll look at the guy who lead La Liga in Schrodinger’s Goals this season…

Can Goal Scorers in Lower Leagues Succeed in the English Premier League?

[Author’s Note: Usually when I write analysis, I try to be definitive in what we can and cannot say. The point of doing this at all is to learn more about the game of football, and part of the learning is designing a solid methodology that lets you make declarative statements.

Sadly, today’s piece doesn’t quite let you come to definitive conclusions. As much as I want to say, “Yes, these things are true!” in this case I can only say, “I think these things are true and the data mostly agrees.” Despite all that, I think this piece adds to the general knowledge, and I hope you enjoy.]

Teams should have bought Jordan Rhodes. Premier League teams, I mean.

They probably should have done it after he scored 7 goals in 14 matches at League Two Brentford at age 19. Instead, Huddersfield bought him for £888K. They certainly should have bought him when he put up a 19G/7A season in 45 starts for Huddersfield in League One at age 20. And again after a 16/1 in 28 starts at age 21. And AGAIN after a 37/3 in 37 starts at age 22.

You see, Jordan Rhodes is a massive outlier. Players who produce numbers like he did at Huddersfield – scoring goals at a rate of one per game – are exceptionally rare. It’s rarer still that they do it at such a young age. As something that is rare in the game of football, and with a skill so valuable, you would have thought that one of the Premier League clubs would snap him up as soon as he came to their attention.

None of them did.

Transfer Dossiers – Ben Yedder, Alessandrini, Boudebouz, and a Dude Named Saber

Greetings, and welcome to another edition of Transfer Dossiers. In this series, I take a statistical look at potentially overlooked or just plain interesting transfer targets in the major leagues. I covered the first half of the players from Ligue 1 here. They include Payet, Mollo, Cabella, and Feret, so if you are interested in them, clique ze link. [Note: I also looked at Bundesliga value targets here.]

Today I’m going to look at a couple of young goalscorers, as well as an attacking midfielder that was rumoured to be on his way to Liverpool last summer, a transfer that – like most of Liverpool’s summer transfers last year – never quite happened.

[Note: I have added an explanation for the abbreviations of stat categories at the bottom.]