Zaha's value rises as pounds 1bn frenzy knows no bounds

An analysis the mind-boggling prices swirling around the Premier League as deadline day approaches
Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha, left is tackled by Tottenham Hotspur’s Mousa Dembélé during the English Premier League soccer match between Crystal Palace and Tottenham Hotspur. | AP
Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha, left is tackled by Tottenham Hotspur’s Mousa Dembélé during the English Premier League soccer match between Crystal Palace and Tottenham Hotspur. | AP

By the time English football emerges disorientated from the frenzy of the transfer window at 11pm on Wednesday, it is expected that more than pounds 1?billion will have been lavished on fees for footballers of talents good, fair and indifferent by a Premier League that knows no other way.

For all that money spent acquiring the awesome power of Paul Pogba, the pace of Sadio Mane, the scheming of ?lkay Gundo?an or just the great unpredictability of Papy Djilobodji, there is one proposed deal that never got close to being part of the pounds 1 billion summer. What a curiosity that pounds 12?million offer from Tottenham Hotspur for Wilfried Zaha was, replete with a generous pounds 2?million in add-ons.

Within hours the Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish was politely pointing out that it was on the low side given Mauricio Pochettino considers Zaha to have the potential of a Cristiano Ronaldo.

It should be said that his Spurs chairman, Daniel Levy, wants to pay a Ronaldo-sized fee - although the fee in question is not the record-breaking pounds 80?million Real Madrid paid in 2009. Rather it was the pounds 12.25?million Manchester United paid Sporting Lisbon for the 18-year-old Ronaldo in 2003.

Was it just Levy doing what Levy does so well? That being, antagonising the competition with derisory bids for their best players while simultaneously demanding top dollar for Spurs' own collection of waifs and strays? The early signs would suggest so.

Spurs value Nabil Bentaleb at around pounds 17?million, which Schalke will be expected to pay if he has a good season on loan. As well as that, Levy wants around pounds 14?million from Hull or Sunderland for the services of Ryan Mason. If Zaha feels undervalued at Palace then he might want to examine in more detail how little Spurs seem to value him - but perhaps there was another game afoot.

Certainly Zaha, on around pounds 40,000-a-week already, will get a new contract out of this wrangle, despite having four years left on his existing deal which he signed last year when his move back from Manchester United was made permanent. Palace are one of many clubs who are now paying new signings like Andros Townsend the kind of wages that they have never paid before, and if one talented erratic winger can earn big money, then it is only a matter of time before the other talented erratic winger wants the same.

This summer transfer window has sealed the Premier League's financial supremacy in Europe this season, on the back of the new pounds 8.3?billion television deal. A Premier League club has broken the world transfer record. Arsene Wenger committed more on transfers on Thursday, on Shkodran Mustafi and Lucas Perez than any other single day in 20 years at Arsenal. The league as a whole is on course to break pounds 1?billion. Real Madrid and Barcelona - for many years the traditional raiders - have been quiet.

But the notion of a bargain for a Premier League club no longer exists. Perhaps that was why Levy was keen to lowball Palace for Zaha because he knew if he was even remotely serious about buying the player then the conversation would probably have to start around pounds 30 million. Premier League fees and the wages have expanded in line with the vastness of the television deal that has been signed, and so publicly celebrated as a symbol of the league's popularity.

In Germany they call it "stupid English money". In the Premier League they regard it as the premium. Chelsea are understood to have offered around pounds 35?million for the AC Milan defender Alessio Romagnoli, and been rejected. So far they have been told that pounds 40?million is not enough to sign Kalidou Koulibaly from Napoli. These are the kind of offers that used to get business done, but no longer.

It is the same story when Premier League clubs go into the Championship. Norwich City are quoting clubs, including the champions Leicester City, upwards of pounds 14?million for Robbie Brady. One of them might even pay that much or more for him by Wednesday night, although it will not be the fee any of them had on the spreadsheet when they began the summer.

Looming over all this is the prospect of what Chinese investment might do to the league if one of their major players decides to follow the encouragement of President Xi Jinping and buy a club within the next 12 months. A serious Chinese billionaire taking control of one of the league's big names would change the game again. The suggestion that there might be a Chinese buyer for Liverpool, denied by their American owners Fenway Sports Group, is making the league jittery.

Of course, when it comes to these worries, the Premier League's European rivals and the United States' most lucrative exports, the NBA and the NFL, are playing the world's smallest violins. The pounds 3?billion earned by the Premier League for their overseas rights over the next three years is far in excess of anything the rest command.

For the time being the price being paid in the Premier League is the premium on transfers. Fees are rising, wages are rising, and what was regarded as a good contract 12 months ago suddenly is no longer enough. Players have not suddenly got better, they have just got more expensive for clubs trying to buy and retain them. Perhaps that is why Levy was so half-hearted in his bid for Zaha, and has been relatively low-key in his dealings this summer: because he knows that this is a pounds 1?billion market in which there is plenty of money but precious few bargains to be had.

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