Venting out his frustrations on missing out on a handful of transfer targets, newly-promoted Newcastle United manager Rafael Benitez has slammed the spending spree in transfer market this season, labeling it “not ideal” and “crazy”.
The Geordies have been frustrated when it comes to their dealings with transfers this summer, with the club unable to meet the exorbitant fees set on their transfer targets.
Indeed, Newcastle have been linked with a variety of players this season, including Atletico Madrid striker Luciano Venetto and Norwich winger Jacob Murphy, but so far, the club have only managed to sign French centre-back Florian Dejeune from Eibar.
True enough, according to the Chronicle, Championship side Norwich have refused to sell their young winger Murphy for less than £10-million, a value Benitez isn’t exactly happy to hear.
According to pundits and experts, the 22-year-old English wide man has a market value of £850,000.
Their inability to compete with rivals in the market, despite the club pushing the limits of their bankroll in an effort to bring in players, has left Benitez gobsmacked, saying, “It’s not easy for a lot of teams because the market is a little bit crazy. We have to try to do our best.
“We know where we are – that is not ideal because everybody wants to see a lot of players signing already – but we have to keep working and see what we can do,” the former Napoli and Real Madrid manager added.
This surge of prices for targets by Premier League clubs has been brought about by the new Premier League TV deal, which earned all top-flight clubs a whopping £5-billion in profits in exchange for TV rights.
Now, according to former football agent Jon Smith, prices are only going to get higher. Citing Everton’s £30-million purchase of Sunderland goalkeeper Jonathan Pickford in recent weeks, Smith said in an interview with the BBC, “There are players like him who would probably have been worth £12-million a couple of years ago going for £30-million.
“£30m is a very big number, but it’s become the norm,” Smith added.
Just a review of the top 10 transfers made by Premier League clubs this summer reveals a sum of £335.88-million already spent on players, with the total spending so far reaching values of more than £500-million – And the transfer market has officially opened just two weeks ago.
Last summer’s transfer spend has reached record £1.16-billion. From the looks of things, it appears the Premier League is set to break that record yet again.
Crazy, indeed.