All may be relevant to varying degrees, but to my mind it concerns two bigger concepts. It can all be boiled down to this: time and money, allied to managerial talent.
About money:
And Liverpool's two biggest signings remain Emile Heskey at £11m and Djibril Cissé at £14.2m, both signed by Gérard Houllier.
Having cost a total of £86.5m, the average transfer fee of Liverpool's 'top 20' squad for 2006/07 was £4.3m per player.
Because of the young players the Gunners procure on nominal fees, it's easy to forget the bigger fees they've paid. The average cost of their main 20 is £4.8m, half a million pounds more than Liverpool's.
Compare that with Manchester United's £7.1m per player, and you can see that, on average, United paid approaching twice as much for its main squad, which cost £141.4m in total.This, despite having the most youth academy graduates in their ranks.And this before apparently spending £50m on just three players this summer, which could take their average up to around the £10m mark for 2007/08, if they replace three inexpensive fringe players.
Of course, if you hadn't already guessed, Chelsea are by far and away the biggest spenders, with its 20 main players costing a staggering combined total of £249.5m average cost of a player is £12.5m).
So, basically, Benítez, whose record signing remains Xabi Alonso at £10.5m, has yet to even spend within £2m of the Chelsea average. If that doesn't highlight the disparity, nothing will.
About time:
Both Ferguson and Benítez inherited sides that had just finished 4th, with Ferguson doing so way back in 1986. And yet at this exact stage of his United career Ferguson saw a banner unveiled by fans at Old Trafford: "Three years of excuses and it's still. Ta ra Fergie." Compare that with the witty and supportive banners seen in Greece last week and you can get an idea of how supremely better the Spaniard has done in his first 36 months.
In 1989 Alex Ferguson had yet to win even a single trophy at United, and rather than improve the situation had actually taken them down to an 11th-place finish (14th in 1990).
How can Benítez be expected to quickly overtake a man who has spent 21 years shaping his club from the very top to the very bottom, and whose squad cost a lot more per-player to assemble? Or quickly overtake Chelsea, whose manager Jose Mourinho, unprecedentedly, won the title in his first and second seasons, but who also had a totally unprecedented mega-budget?
Spurs and Newcastle have pretensions to be 'big' clubs, and in many ways are just that. Both have a lot of supporters (locally, if not globally), and can boast significant achievements in their history, albeit dating back a few years now. And both have spent a fair amount of money over the years.
This is how many league points each 'big club' got for every million pounds spent on its 20 main players.
Liverpool.....................0.78
Spurs.............................0.75
Arsenal ........................0.71
Man United.................0.63
Newcastle....................0.56
Chelsea.........................0.33
Of course, the higher up the table you go the more you have to pay for just a few extra points.
Regarding the 4 main teams (Manu, Chavsky, Gunners), Benítez stands 4th in terms of squad cost, and 4th in terms of time spent at his club. That doesn't make getting to 1st an easy proposition.
So Benítez has been battling time and money. And he will continue to do so, albeit to a lessening degree the longer he spends in the job, and more money is paid out. When signing players he will need to continue to get the most points for every million pounds spent. And if he continues to do just that, following a new round of investment in the team, he stands a great chance of significant success.
And, with all this in mind, if he does land the title it will be up there with the biggest achievements imaginable.
Such have been his monumental achievements at Valencia and Liverpool with relatively small budgets, you can't help but think that, within a couple of years, and with the funds to spend on the right players, he'll have ended our long wait for a 19th title.
Complete article: Link
Very relevant article IMO and I've hardly nothing to add to this. What do you think?
...even newcastle spends more on a single player...
