£15 million for David Bentley? Why Are Englishmen So Expensive?

By: Daryl | July 31st, 2008

You’ve likely heard by now that Spurs have signed David Bentley from Blackburn for £15 million. Good move for the player, but that’s a big chunk of change for a right winger with a lot to prove.

EPL Talk have already asked: “is Bentley worth £15 million?” The answer is of course no. Which is the same answer to the question “is Darren Bent worth £16.5 million?”

So the real question has to be: why are English players so expensive?

I’m definitely no economist. It took just two weeks of an Economics A-Level course to realize I was way out of my depth and needed to switch subjects quick or fail. But in those two weeks I heard the words “supply” and “demand” a lot. OK, it was mostly “you don’t supply anything in this class, and I demand you go and study something else”, but I also learned it was one of the fundamentals of a market economy.

Basically, English players are in demand. Not because they’re so very brilliant (see: Euro 2008, Qualifying Group E) but basically because they’re native. I can’t prove this with numbers (see: above) but seems to me that you need English (or at least British and Irish) players to succeed in the Premier League.

It’s no coincidence that John Terry and Frank Lampard formed the spine of Chelsea’s title winning team, and likewise with Rio Ferdinand, Paul Scholes and Wayne Rooney at Manchester United. We also saw Arsenal’s title challenge wilt last season through – you could argue – a lack of grit, and now it seems Rafa Benitez is making an effort to buy locally for next season (Robbie Keane is Irish, yes, but he’s grown up in the English leagues).

So English players are in demand.

But they’re also in short supply. You’ve already heard all the complaints about too many foreigners in the Premier League (and England boss Fabio Capello is joining that chorus). They’re just aren’t very many quality English player around, and so those that are around and available will inevitably cost a small fortune.

So, is David Bentley the right winger worth £15 million? Hell, no. But is David Bentley the English right winger worth £15 million? Maybe.

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Category: English Premier League

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Sam

As an anarchist it's hard for me to discuss this question without inevitably bitching about how money-throwing like this is insane in every respect.

As a Spurs fan, fuck you all, we've got David Bentley and you don't hahaha.
kovosoccer

So how many caps does Bentley have? Does he have any chance of displacing the other DB on the national team?
Daryl

Rob, that's a really good point about selling to direct competitors forcing the price up. They must have covered that in week 3 of A-Level Economics because it didn't occur to me.
gaston

35% of epl are englsih

i don't know whether that includes itish, scottish and welsh player or if its purely british (england) players)
phil

How many English players play outside of the Premiership? I know Beckham in the US...and that's pretty much it. Only Hargreaves played any significant time outside England, and he was a Canadian player until the England nats had a hole in midfield.
Rob

I think in a sense it's the just because English players will 99.9999995% of the time join another English club, and selling to someone who you are directly competeing with is always gonna push the price up. The other small percentage are being sold by clubs in the CL, to other CL clubs, and so again the price is pushed up.

Though I completely don't have a head for numbers either. I failed Buisness Studies at Secondary School.
Laurie

I'm trying to compare this to MLS.

We (MLS) obviously have a similar dearth of supply of quality homegrown players. And our demand is less. Yet...not that much less, especially with expansion.

But our revenue upside is much lower, and so cost is a big deal. MLS seems intent on filling the gaps with up-and-coming foreigners. The value of homegrown US players is going up for foreign clubs, but not for MLS teams. We're losing a lot of US boys to overseas teams because they're willing to pay more than MLS for the not-quite-stellar players.

So why are British boys worth more for EPL teams, but US boys aren't for MLS teams?

Single entity must be having some effect, since MLS basically doesn't pay transfer fees, ever, if it can help it.

Also, the exhorbitant sums that can come to a successful EPL team are WAY over what an American team will see for at least decades.

But I guess, from a purely economic standpoint, it would seem more efficient for the EPL to keep bringing in the foreigners, like MLS is starting to do, because they're good and cheaper. And basic economics says that if two products are equally good, the cheaper one is the one that will sell.

So the high cost of British players would seem to imply that they're responsible for something like more revenue coming in? That there is some less visible cost to having too many foreigners, like not being able to drum up interest from your average British fan?

Curious what others think.
Dave Martinez

You answered your own question. England especially is looking to highlight more national players. Hence, your 2 weeks in economics class have paid off well.
areallaticfromthesouth

Just as well Chelsea didn't want him - Would have been £30m otherwise!!