As the dust settles on the English Premier League 2015-16 season and the footballing world comes to grip with Leicester FC’s magical title, the big clubs of Europe have come to see who they can pry away from the team.
However is it a good idea to drop millions of pounds sterling on players who have had average careers up until this season?
Charlie Adam, Wilfried Zaha, Scott Sinclair, Rickie Lambert, Andy Carroll, Adam Johnson, Stewart Downing, Danny Ings and Angel Di Maria – the list goes on. There have been many players in the Premier League who have been bought after one good season and then failed to repeat that form.
These players are often moved on for a fraction of the price they were brought for in the first place.
It worth dropping a huge transfer fee on the Leicester players? It has to be remembered that there was a reason these players were playing at Leicester in the first place. A team that was 5000-1 to win the Premier League and a team that most pundits thought would be playing against Blackburn, Leeds, Charlton and other former Premier League high flyers in the Championship come season 2016-17.
Jamie Vardy was playing non-league football for Fleetwood in 2012. Danny Drinkwater was released from Manchester United despite never playing a competitive game for them.
Marc Albrighton was deemed surplus to requirements at Aston Villa, the team that finished bottom of the table.
Yet these players are rumoured to be big signings for big clubs with no guarantee that they will be able to produce this newfound form and consistency. What happens when they have to adjust to a new team and a new game plan?
While it’s easy to comment from the stands and with the benefit of hindsight we can easily pick the poor transfers from the good ones, it is incredibly hard at the coal face.
Wait too long to buy a player and his value could skyrocket, or a rival may buy him and get propelled past you in the championship race.
Only time will tell if the Leicester accomplishments were a result of champion players or a champion team. However it would be nice for some caution to be shown with the amount of money being thrown around in the transfer market for a change.
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