It is interesting to look back on the spectacular rise in transfer fees during the 15-year life of what started out as the Premiership and is now, as the Premier League, probably the richest league in world football.

There have been 10 record-breaking moves during this time, and they are:

June 1992 – Paul Gascoigne, Tottenham to Lazio - £5.5m
Jan   1995 – Andy Cole, Newcastle to Manchester United - £7m
June 1995 – Dennis Bergkamp, Inter Milan to Arsenal - £7.5m
June 1995 – Stan Collymore, Nottingham Forest to Liverpool - £8.5m
July  1996 – Alan Shearer, Blackburn Rovers to Newcastle - £15m
Aug  1999 – Nicolas Anelka, Arsenal to Real Mardrid - £22.5m
July  2001 – Juan Veron, Lazio to Manchester United - £28.1m
July  2002 – Rio Ferdinand, Leeds to Manchester United - £29.1m
July  2006 – Andriy Shevchenko, AC Milan to Chelsea - £30.8m
Sept 2008 – Robinho, Real Madrid to Manchester City - £32.5m

If you take a close look at the big spenders, you will see that Manchester United broke the record three times. In fact, they would have broken it again in the summer when they signed Dimitar Berbatov from Spurs for £30m, only for Robinho’s stunning transfer from Real Madrid to Manchester City to top their bid.

But what do the Top 10 changes tell us? The face of soccer was changing as the increase in transfer records grew exponentially. Within a period of 15 years, the record has risen by 600%. At this rate of growth, a player will cost £180m in another 15 years' time!

What kind of crazy club will pay that astronomical sum of money for a single player? If this superstar player gets injured in an international game, will his country pay the club for his injury? Or worse still, God forbid, some ''wise'' club manager decides to invest in a £10,000 player and the mission is for this guy to "take out" the superstar. What will happen to soccer in general?

Scanning through the list, it is apparent that only a few of them justified their price tags. The best would be the brilliant capture of the non-flying Dutchman Dennis Bergkamp by Arsenal. At least Bruce Rioch did something right before leaving the Gunners!

For only £7.5m, we had a great bargain as Bergkamp finished his career with Arsenal, appearing 315 times, scoring 87 times and providing numerous assists in his 11 years with the club.

The worst? It would be a tough call between Stan Collymore, Juan Veron and Andriy Shevchenko. Well, at least Stan the Man did score a few stunning goals (and only a few). My condemning vote goes to Shevchenko. For £30m I think one can buy a few John Carews or Amr Zakis and they'd probably score three times more goals than the Ukrainian.

So what does all this tell us? Money doesn't always buy you the best players, and money is getting smaller in value by the day. In the current global financial crisis, it may just be about time that someone stepped in to regulate soccer players’ wages and clubs' finances.