AFC Bournemouth’s transfer policy — does it work?
It has been an extremely difficult season for Eddie Howe and AFC Bournemouth. A season that coughed, spluttered and whimpered without ever generating any momentum, it has been a campaign uncharacteristic of an Eddie Howe team. His AFC Bournemouth management career, whilst punctuated with the odd bump down to earth, had mostly been glittered with excitement, free-flowing football and attacking impetus. At time of writing though, the team finds itself in the relegation zone on goal difference and the most recent results have left AFC Bournemouth fans feeling very concerned.
As one might expect at a time like this, this down-turn in results and form has drawn a lot of attention from people outside of the club and questions are being asked. How can Eddie Howe, who was once linked with the England job and touted as a replacement for Pochettino at Spurs, now find himself in one of the toughest periods of his relatively short managerial career, with his squad looking doomed to return to the Championship?
I could be alone here but one of the things I struggle with most with supporting a Premier League team is this apparent requirement for someone in the game to either be an absolute genius/the best that’s ever lived/the brightest, most impressive young manager in the game or a fraud -football’s favourite insult. There seems to be no in-between, no grey area and no reason for compromise. They’re brilliant or they’re dreadful.
The truth of the matter is: Eddie Howe is not the best manager to ever grace the game, nor is he (and I can’t believe I’m having to write this) a fraud. One only has to examine his career to recognise that he is a manager with an impressive and extraordinary record of taking his Bournemouth team from the bottom of League 2, to having a five year stay in the Premier League in an extremely short period of time; coaching and developing lower league footballers into Premier League stars, all while having to learn on the job. And believe me, he will be the first to admit that he still has a lot to learn.
The rise from League 2 has been ably documented by writers far more talented than me so I’m not going to go over that. Of course, there will always be those who will attribute the rise up the leagues solely to the club’s “Russian billionaire” (who has an incredible achievement of being the first ever billionaire with an estimated worth of under £120m) but for me, it’s a lazy argument and those with an understanding of how football works will recognise that it’s far more complicated than that.
A more reasonable discussion is to delve into Eddie Howe’s transfer policy, an area that is regularly and understandably criticised.
In order to fully analyse the club’s transfer policy, it’s important to recognise and understand AFCB’s financial position. As mentioned above, it is a common misconception that AFC Bournemouth are bankrolled by a billionaire. Whilst he is exceptionally rich compared to most of the people on the planet, he actually sits 17th in the table of Premier League’s owner rich-list:
Sheikh Mansour — Manchester City — £23.3bn
Roman Abramovich — Chelsea — £9.6bn
Stan Kroenke — Arsenal — £6.8bn
Guy Guangchang — Wolves — £5.2bn
Nassef Sawiris — Aston Villa — 5bn
Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha — Leicester — £4.6bn
Joe Lewis — Tottenham — £3.9bn
The Glazers — Manchester United — £3.6bn
Gao Jisheng — Southampton — £3.1bn
Joshua Harris — Crystal Palace — £2.7bn
Mike Ashley — Newcastle — £2.3bn
John Henry — Liverpool — £2.1bn
Farhad Moshiri — Everton — £1.5bn
Tony Bloom — Brighton — £1.3bn
David Sullivan and David Gold — West Ham — £1.2bn
Abdullah bin Musa’ed — Sheffield United — £198m
Maxim Denim — Bournemouth — £110m
Gino Pozzo — Watford — £93m
Mike Garlick — Burnley — £62m
Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones — Norwich — £23m
The table above highlights a few things: one of them being the incredible job that Burnley have done with the resources available to them but also suggests that, based on those figures, Bournemouth are arguably almost precisely where they should be, especially if we’re using the same rule [money always equals success] that was applied by many during AFCB’s championship winning campaign in 2015. Have the club in fact been overachieving this entire time, with their style of play and apparent comfortability of surviving each campaign masking this?
It’s often quoted that AFCB’s ‘net spend’ is one of the highest in the division. This is true, based almost entirely on the fact that the club has not yet seen it necessary to sell their prized assets, somehow finding a way to bat off enquiries for the likes of Callum Wilson, Nathan Ake and Joshua King. With this in mind, it’s almost impossible to ascertain AFCB’s transfer market successes or failures without the exact figures to hand.
However, if we look at this at an entirely financial point of view, it’s possible to recognise that, when we calculate the cost of the player against the revenue of selling the player/the players’ potential market value, Eddie Howe’s transfers are significantly in the green overall.
In fact, I’ve have probably been a little conservative when calculating many of these Market Values, particularly for Jefferson Lerma and Nathan Aké, the latter having a £40m buyback clause reportedly teasing Chelsea every transfer window.
With the finances available to the club, it has been necessary to adopt a ‘diamond in the rough’ type transfer philosophy, using Eddie Howe’s notorious ability to improve players through his coaching -something that has been remarked upon by many players, both current and previous. This approach will not always work (as Jordon Ibe’s £16m ill-fated spell at the club proves) but it has been the foundation and structure of their Premier League survival each and every year and until now, has proven very successful.
In some instances, the markup in player pricing has been incredible. Take Joshua King, for whom we paid £1m, who has not only has scored vital Premier League goals to secure our stay in the league but has also been linked with Manchester Utd as recently as the last transfer window, with AFCB understood to have rejected a bid in the region of £20m.
Or Matt Ritchie, signed in League One for a nominal £500k fee, developed and nurtured through the leagues during the rise, resulting in landing in the Premier League before eventually opting to sign for Newcastle for £12m.
A another common criticism of AFC Bournemouth’s transfers is the often very high initial transfer fee paid for players that are only showing promise. Whilst this is a valid concern, once we start comparing some of the wage bills in the league, we can begin to understand why.
It has only been within the last two seasons that the club have begun breaking the relatively low salary ceiling that it imposed upon itself. Callum Wilson, now being the top earner at the club, grabbed the headlines upon signing his contract, understood to be around £60,000/week.
The website Spotrac.com lists the club’s players and salaries and whilst it’s impossible to fully know the accuracy, is a fair indicator of where the club sits, when we compare it against other wage structures.
Any Bournemouth fan who has followed the club for longer than 10 years, might look at that table with eyebrows raised; a far cry from the days where the players went without wages for weeks, in the depths of the club’s financial dispairs.
However, when we look at AFCB’s wage structure against their most recent competitors Crystal Palace, a club very secure within the league, it certainly highlights further why AFC Bournemouth had needed to adopt their transfer policy of buying raw and developing into gems.
Please note: this isn’t an attack on Crystal Palace or any other club. The figures are only used to highlight AFCB’s finances, rather than criticise anyone else’s.
The table of salaries appears to suggest that seven of Crystal Palace’s squad earn more or the same as AFCB’s top earner, with three of the team earning double. If we removed Callum Wilson from the equation, fifteen of the opponents squad earn more or the same as AFCB’s next top earner, with only 4 players earning less.
I don’t think anyone can begrudge Crystal Palace, a well run Premier League team, on how they spend their money but this is certainly an indication of what AFCB are up against financially.
AFC Bournemouth’s financial position means that the club do not have easy pickings when it comes to transfer targets. Established Premier League footballers not only command huge transfer fees but it’s likely they’re also on wages that far surpass the club’s wage structure limits. This leaves few options when it comes to bolstering and improving the squad.
Utilising Eddie Howe’s renowned coaching ability, the club seek out raw diamonds to develop who are often considered future stars of their current clubs. While this may carry a higher initial transfer fee paid to the parent club, who will be reluctant to lose a future star, the raw, unproven player’s wages will not yet reflect their potential — making them a worthwhile gamble, without too much risk.
Naturally, the initial high transfer fee often grabs the headlines and understandably so. Football is an industry that has an entire day to celebrate the fact that vast, incredible sums of money have been spent. However, in the case of AFC Bournemouth, it’s apparent that the club’s financial standing means they don’t have an awful lot of choice but to outlay the initial fee demand. They simply cannot afford the wages of established Premier League players.
On the whole, this transfer policy has worked for AFC Bournemouth and for every Jordon Ibe, there’s a David Brooks.