What do you think have been the Premier League’s worst summer signings?
How would you rate them?
How would you rank them?
Well, a new report from ESPN has taken on the task.
The formula they used takes some faith…
‘What makes a bad transfer?
Almost by definition, the worst deals of these 203 deals at €10 million or more will be among the most expensive. And if we look at “value left in the bank” – a player’s transfer fee multiplied by the percentage of minutes he has not played so far – the shift will be strongly towards the biggest deals.
If a team paid €10 million to sign a player, then €10 million is the most that can be left in the bank. If a team were to pay a hundred million euros, then you see where I’m going. Based on this rough measure, these are the ten worst deals in the Big Five leagues so far:
1) Alexander Isak, Liverpool: €107.88 million left in the bank
2) Yoane Wissa, Newcastle: €57.7 million
3) Nick Woltemade, Newcastle: €46.95 million
4) Xavi Simons, Tottenham: €43.2 million
5) Jamie Gittens, Chelsea: €41.83 million
6) Noni Madueke, Arsenal: €38.7 million
7) Tyler Dibling, Everton: €37.95 million
8) Omari Hutchinson, Nottingham Forest: €37.8 million
9) Florian Wirtz, Liverpool: €37.5 million
10) Jorrel Hato, Chelsea: €36.71 million
Pretty incredible that ESPN has found a way to make Nick Wolte the third worst of all the Premier League summer signings.
I think he should be more focused on being among the top three…
Then I thought about the way they ranked this, basically the minutes players haven’t played for their new clubs.
I checked Nick Woltemade and he has started all eight Premier League games since his arrival, playing 618 Premier League minutes of the maximum 720 that would have been possible.
I then persevered, this ESPN report includes the three Premier League games, 270 minutes, BEFORE he signed and became available to play!!! This is beyond laughable, so will they repeat this exercise after the January window and then penalize players signed during that period, including the minutes they didn’t play for their new clubs in the first half of this season???
Not content with that, ESPN then used a different formula to create another list of the Premier League’s worst summer signings (indeed, the worst in all of Europe)…
However, we judge these moves based on their downsides alone. Let’s say you sign someone for $80 million and he only plays 50% of the minutes per year… but he also gives you twelve goals and five assists every year. Is that a failure? A success? A combination of the two?
Transfermarkt also estimates the market value of every player in the world through crowdsourcing. If we multiply that by the percentage of minutes each player has played, we can come up with another rough number: a version of the value he has given to his team so far. (It’s not perfect – the estimated transfer values are not 1-to-1 with player performance – but it at least allows us to apply the methodology to each player equally.)
We can then rank each deal based on both of these numbers – value offered, value left in the bank – and then we can combine the two numbers to get an overall picture of each transfer’s performance to date.
(***ED: If you fully understand that formula, then I’m impressed!!!)
The 10 worst transfer deals so far
10. Ben Doak, €23.1m, Liverpool to Bournemouth
9. Arnaud Kalimuendo, €30 million, Stade Rennais to Nottingham Forest
8. Fábio Silva, €22.5 million, Wolverhampton to Borussia Dortmund
7. Omari Hutchinson, €40 million, from Ipswich Town to Nottingham Forest
6. Tyler Dibling, €40.5m, Southampton to Everton
5. Dario Essugo, €22.7 million, Sporting Lisbon to Chelsea
4. Ardon Jashari, €36 million, Club Brugge to AC Milan
3. Charalampos Kostoulas, €30 million, Olympiacos to Brighton
2. Giovanni Leoni, €31 million, Parma to Liverpool
1. Yoane Wissa, €57.7m, Brentford to Newcastle
While there are all kinds of caveats to these rankings, no such conditions apply here. Based purely on the first three months of the season, this is easily the worst transfer of the summer. Wissa hasn’t played a minute for Newcastle yet, but it’s worse than that. All others in this top 10 are 23 years old or younger. In fact, everyone else in the top 25 is 24 years old or younger. These are all players with plenty of time to improve and get good, to make up for lost time.
However, Wissa is already 29 years old.’
My conclusions
This feels even more bizarre as there is not even a mention of the reality that Yoane Wissa suffered a serious injury while on international duty that has prevented him from playing until now. You’d think it was a case where Wissa proved a total flop and couldn’t get a game in because of how poor he was.
It should definitely rank as the unluckiest signing, not the worst. Yoane Wissa had only missed three Premier League games due to injury in the past three seasons, then he and Newcastle United suffered this incredible bad luck!
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