The transfer window is a free-for-all; a veritable war of money and stepping on every other club’s toes in order to get what – or who – you want.

Clubs regularly go head-to-head with bids in order to get the player they seek, in what is a very real-estate-esque method of gaining players and personnel. At times the proceedings more closely resemble an auction in backwater Louisiana than well-researched business dealings in big-city England.

Traditionally, the biggest collector of talent from all over the planet has been Real Madrid, the world’s richest club. They loved to sign up players based on their star power and not necessarily their playing abilities. Since the policy to transfer in ‘Galacticos’ was initiated, Real have won little, if anything, in the way of trophies and championships.

Perhaps this kind of approach would help the academy system renew its faith in domestically-born players, as it’s cheaper to recruit from next door than from Rome or Barcelona


Despite a squad containing David Beckham, Luis Figo, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Zinedine Zidane, Raul and other big names, Real have not picked up any silverware in over three years. And now, in the fourth year of failure, they are on the edge of missing out on a UEFA Champions League spot.

Suffice to say, you can buy a star player for every position, but you can’t necessarily make them work and succeed together. Chelsea are having that problem right now, faltering in their title challenge and forced to start world-class players against Arsenal’s reserve team in the Carling Cup Final, solely to ensure that they secured some silverware.

Though their team contains the likes of Frank Lampard, Andriy Shevchenko, Michael Ballack, Ashley Cole, Claude Makelele and former Champions League winning defenders Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Carvalho, Chelsea are struggling to find any sort of form or fluidity.

Their performances are perforated by the fact that they are boring and purely functional: they would sooner grind out a 1-0 performance than play exciting football and bring crowds to their feet.

While players like Petr Cech, Michael Essien and even media magnate Didier Drogba are a genuine joy to watch, Shevchenko, Lampard and Ballack have been sub-par and subdued, looking out of place most of the time. Makelele has yet to find his form of previous years, while Ashley Cole was better suited to Arsenal’s style of play.

Enter the revolutionary idea of the year: spending limits for each club. It’s pretty clear that having a billionaire back your business dealings is an assured move. But why not implement the idea of an annual limit on how much each club can spend within the two designated transfer windows? Just to make it that much more concrete, let’s suggest that £20m during the summer is a good limit, with another £10m maximum during the January window. What effect would that have?

Not many clubs have the financial capacity to spend such an amount of money during transfer time, and that’s what sets the bigger clubs apart from the pretenders. But setting a limit allows for clubs to budget their funds and possibly have something to aim for. For example, it’s highly unlikely that Reading will have the funds to spend £30m in a given year but, as is shown through the transfer window, it isn’t just a club’s ability to find stray funds, but the methods they choose to manage their players.

In Chelsea’s case there are endless available funds that could transfer in just about anybody. You only have to look as far as the £30m transfer of Shevchenko for proof. However, a club like Reading have to be far more shrewd in their dealings, and will usually use a combination of cash and players in order to obtain what they want.

At this point, Steve Sidwell, a midfield maestro who came through the ranks at Arsenal, is likely to be the first casualty of the Royals’ success. His calibre on the pitch is undoubted and his courtship by larger clubs has been a long time coming. He seems desperate for the exit door, and will likely fetch anywhere from £5m to £12m, depending on the club’s bidding and Reading’s expectations.

But with a £20m limit in the summer, clubs need to decide to either transfer in one world-class player, or several very good performers and those with unproven potential at the top level. Perhaps this kind of approach would help the academy system renew its faith in domestically-born players, as it’s cheaper to recruit from next door than from Rome or Barcelona.

This limit would include the amount obtained from the sale and loaning out of players, or funds obtained from league table placement, Champions League funds, winners’ medals and cup finals. Just because a club manages to generate another £40m from good performances doesn’t mean they are forced to throw it on the table and rake in new talent.

What it does mean is that the playing field will be levelled and the size and quality of squads will be far more even keel than has been the case over the last 20 years. If Michel Platini is really interested in this levelling mentality, he’ll likely appreciate the addition of new faces in the Champions League, UEFA Cup and so on.

Of course, there will be people who absolutely detest this approach to the transfer windows. But frankly there isn’t enough critical discourse available on the subject to make leeway for a new system.

Would a limit on transfer-window spending work? Leave a comment below or if you prefer, write an article for Sportingo.