Recession? Not In Football!

For the everyday taxpayer the economy has become one of life's main worries. People aren't sure whether they can afford as many luxuries or even if they can buy as many necessities. But although the country, and indeed most of the world, is in a recession, there is a certain area of work that seems to have lost all contact with reality.

These 'workers' are paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a week but still complain and use it to buy prostitutes, or escorts as some like to be called. But last night, the Premiership's transfer deadline day epitomized everything that is wrong in football. As the years have moved forward, transfer fees have got more and more unrealistic yet teams are willing to shell out the ridiculous amounts of money. At roughly 6pm last night, the Premiership had spent over £80million in transfer fees, forty of which bought just two players. By the deadline at 11pm the Premiership had spent over £200million! A value of money that will never be seen in the real world and is also just unfathomable.

It all started two years ago when Real Madrid were willing to pay Manchester United £90million for Cristiano Ronaldo. He may have been one, if not, the best footballer in the world but no-one is really worth £90million. This window we saw Manchester City splash their cash to buy Bosnian striker Edin Dzeko who, according to Wolfsburg, is worth £27million! I don't think so, his scoring rate may be impressive in Germany after one or two seasons, but that doesn't warrant a £27million price-tag. That was followed by Aston Villa who actually spent some money for a change, but bought Darren Bent for £24million. Never in my mind is Bent worth that much money, yes he's played consistently in the Premiership but has never featured in Europe nor has a concrete England spot. Surely that alone makes £24million unreasonable for Darren Bent?

But in the space of five hours, just five hours, Chelsea managed to spend over £70million on just two players. Not even a greedy banker who caused the recession could waste/spend £70million in five hours. First off Chelsea signed defender David Luiz from Benfica for over £20million, who is he you might be asking? Well we'll find out soon as he hasn't exactly lit up the international scene nor has had much influence in the Champions League, so for me not worth the money. Secondly, Chelsea splashed out an extra £50million on Liverpool striker Fernando Torres. Now going by today's standards, Torres is probably worth that amount. But seriously, come on, how can anybody be worth that much money. Blackpool's entire squad cost probably less than half of that amount! But the biggest lunacy yesterday was Liverpool's £35million buy, Andy Carroll. Yes he may be a talented youngster who has shown promise at Newcastle, but that's all it is, promise. Promise means nothing when you need it to materialise and whether it will or not that's for the future to decide, but £35million doesn't decide it and is just plain crazy.

Harry Redknapp feels that the January transfer window should be scrapped. Now that does seem a good point, but let's be honest it's a bit rich coming from a manager that tried signing three people in the depths of the deadline yesterday. If you practice what you preach then Redknapp surely shouldn't have tried buying people in the 'nonsense' market. Whether the market goes or not the big problem is that football is now just a business and has lost all sense of reality. It's not the beautiful game anymore and someone needs to bring the footballing world from out of the clouds and back on planet Earth.