Fulham FC's All Time Expensive Eleven

Article by Barnaby Mollett

The January transfer window is upon us, and as yet Shahid Khan’s wallet has been about as open as a bakery that shuts on Sundays on a Sunday. With the millions due to be spent this window in the Premier League, as some teams fight to be champions whilst others fight to avoid the Championship, I thought I’d take a look back at Fulham’s most expensive signings of all time.

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This actually proved more difficult than I first anticipated. Fulham’s recent policy seems to be that almost every transfer fee is ‘undisclosed’. Perhaps this is to avoid embarrassment when an expensive player is a bigger flop than a giant pair of Crocs, or perhaps - though less likely - to avoid the ire of other teams when an incoming target comes in at a steal. Nonetheless, I’ve dug deep through the annals of history, using estimated fees where the actual fee hadn’t been reported, to uncover the Fulham All-Time Most Expensive XI:

Although all the details are in the diagram above, some particular points to note follow:

• Fulham have spent more than £10 million on a player three times (Steve Marlet, Andrew Johnson, and Bryan Ruiz).
• The club has never spent more than £7 million on a player (£6 million on an outfield player) that isn’t a forward.
• I’ve put Damien Duff in at left-back, as he was the most expensive player that has at some point filled-in for the Cottagers. Jon Harley (at £3.5 million) is the most expensive full-back Fulham have bought. Chris Baird (just over £3 million) is the next most costly, having played at right-back on several occasions. Fulham’s next most expensive specialist full-back is Franck Queudrue – this fee was undisclosed, but most likely in the region of £2 million.
• The defensive line in this team (Duff, Goma, Harley) is the same value as record signing Steve Marlet. This highlights an on-going trend of Fulham’s transfer policy being particularly attack-oriented. Across the Premier League this isn’t unusual, but there is a particular skew in Fulham’s case: £38.4 million for the four most expensive attackers (Marlet, Johnson, Ruiz, Kamara) vis-à-vis £14.5 million lavished on the equivalent defensive quartet (Goma, Harley, Baird, Duff).
• As a loose rule of thumb, in terms of these transfer fees, a forward is valued almost 3 times as much as a defender. However, having watched the Whites’ defence ship goals at an alarming rate this season, and our good performances in past seasons being based on having a resolute defence, I’d be tempted to argue that the defence is three times more valuable than attack!

Well, there’s some analysis. But, this author is an economist at heart, and I thought further investigation was needed to adjust the transfer fees in some way to take into account inflation. For example, the £7 million paid for Van der Sar was in the 2001/02, at the time a club-record fee, would be equivalent to a substantially bigger fee today – with an across the board rise in transfer fees over the last decade.

Without going into the ins and outs of how inflation rates are calculated, it’s safe to say that the current ‘basket of everyday goods’ that the Bank of England uses to work out the inflation rate in the economy includes things like vegetables, shoes, and DVDs, rather than expensive Premier League footballers. The world record transfer fee (almost doubling from £46.6m in 2001 to £85.3m in 2013) has also increased at a far-quicker rate than most normal inflation measures over the last decade. Instead of spending several years analysing data and creating my own ‘transfer price index’, I’ve attempted to take into account – at least in part – the effects of inflation, using average house price data* as a proxy, to provide a second All-Time Most Expensive Fulham XI (all prices in estimated 2013 £GBP equivalence):

Some observations on this revised ‘most expensive’ team:

• Four of the most expensive squad players in 2013 terms were purchased when Fulham were outside the Premier League (Clark, Coleman, Hayles, Saha) – a reflection of Mohamed Al-Fayed’s financial clout in the lower divisions.
• Fulham’s four most expensive defenders now total £23.27 million (Goma, Harley, Coleman and – still – Duff). Their value relative to the most expensive attacking players (Marlet, Johnson, Ruiz, Malbranque – now £50.7 million) has risen – though attacking players are still valued 2.2 times greater than defenders.
• Lee Clark’s monetary transfer value of £3 million (during the 99/00 season) is more in line with a £6.5 million transfer this season (2013/14).
• Steve Marlet’s reported transfer fee of £11.5 million in August 2001 is closer to £20.9 million in today’s money. Seem ridiculous? Marlet scored 6 goals in 25 games that season – an amount not dissimilar to Tottenham’s £26m Robert Soldado’s return of 5 goals after 19 games of this season. Spurs fans will be hoping Soldado picks up his scoring rate and doesn’t become a luxury the club can’t afford like Marlet (who finished his Fulham career with 11 goals in 54 appearances).

Looking at both of these high-cost teams, it is interesting that some of the most consistent performers from Fulham’s time in the Premier League (BredeHangeland, Clint Dempsey, and Luis Boa Morte, for example) don’t make either list. Does this suggest a pragmatic approach to the transfer market pays off more than the big money signings? A matter for much debate and future research, I’m sure, but I have an inkling that going all Moneyball in the transfer window might yield some positive results for Fulham – figuratively, and literally.

* House price data obtained from Office for National Statistics, November 2013 Annual Tables.

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