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Why Shkodran Mustafi Is Worth Every Penny of His Transfer Fee for Arsenal
- Updated: August 29, 2016
This transfer window, it has become increasingly difficult to determine the value of a player. In years gone by it was possible to bracket players by price, but now transfer fees seem far more arbitrary.
Arsenal are about to pay the highest sum they’ve ever spent on a defender to sign Shkodran Mustafi. It might be more than Arsene Wenger would ideally pay, but the indications are that the Germany international will prove to be worth it.
Since the new television deal came into force in the Premier League, fees have skyrocketed. It seems to have dramatically influenced the way business is done. In the past, it was feasible to make an estimation as to a player’s value based on performances and reputation.
That seems to have gone out of the window this summer.
There’s no longer any such as thing as “a £10 million player” or a “£20 million player.” Instead, fees are determined by two things: how much the selling club demands and how much the buying club is willing to pay.
When it’s a Premier League club that comes calling, those numbers get even higher. Continental clubs know they can hold English teams to ransom—they can afford it. Alan Smith of the Guardian noted how a £30 million transfer fee has seemingly become the norm in the Premier League, and Wenger himself told FourFourTwo:
You could say that today in Europe you have two markets – one for the English clubs and one for the rest of Europe.
When the buyer is English, it is true that it multiplies the transfer by two or three or sometimes by 10. If for the same player an English club does not come in, he is worth £5 million, but if an English club comes he is worth 35 or 40 or 50.
One wonders if that’s what’s happened with Mustafi. For all his ability, it seems Valencia drove a particularly hard bargain for their prized centre-half. They know he’s an extremely valuable commodity.
It is notoriously difficult to identify top-class central defenders at the moment. Arsenal’s London rivals Chelsea are finding that out to their cost—according to the BBC, a £35 million bid for Milan’s Alessio Romagnoli is the latest in a succession of attempts to secure a new …
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