Mercenary transfer system should put Old Firm deals into perspective

AT A time of year when the majority of workers are flushed with the holiday spirit, football managers are engaged in the least appealing aspect of their job, the business of operating as both buyer and seller in the transfer market. It is an obligation that is especially gruelling for those in charge of clubs with aspirations to high achievement at home and abroad.

And the system, complicated by the rampant commercialisation of the game and the ever-growing influence of agents over the past two decades, has become so polluted that it moved the Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger, to bitter condemnation at the weekend.

The great Frenchman's criticism was prompted primarily by the conviction that the free-for-all has turned players into mercenaries. He talks from first-hand experience, facing the prospect of losing Emmanuel Adebayor and Aleksandr Hleb to Barcelona, with both men claiming they will earn more in Catalunya than in north London.

"If I had the power to change anything in football, it would be the transfer system, which makes mercenaries of players," said Wenger. "If they are bad ones, they stay. If they are good, they think only of leaving".

To some observers, this may sound a bit rich, coming from a man who has proved himself peerless in the art of unloading jaded superstars – Emmanuel Petit, Marc Overmars, Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry are prime examples – at prices far above their true value and acquiring young talents who can be sold later for colossal profits (q.v. Anelka, Nicolas).

But Wenger's record serves merely to ratify his distress and highlight the grotesqueness of a situation in which even clubs such as Arsenal and Manchester United – the latter striving to keep hold of Cristiano Ronaldo – can be both predator and prey.

The experiences of Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford this summer should help bring some perspective to the operations of Scottish clubs, most specifically the two strongest and wealthiest, Celtic and Rangers. While it is reported that Ferguson will have to fight off an offer of upwards of 70million from Real Madrid for Ronaldo (plus after-tax wages of 150,000 a week to the player) and Wenger is likely to receive a bid of 30million for Adebayor, Gordon Strachan and/or Walter Smith are accused of signing an expensive flop if a player such as Massimo Donati, at a cost of 1.3million, fails to impress.

Even the most extravagant fee, of course, is no guarantee of value for money. It was widely acknowledged that, when Ferguson paid Lazio 28million for Juan Sebastian Veron in 2001, he had bought the world's most accomplished midfielder. When, after three largely undistinguished seasons at Old Trafford, the Argentine joined Chelsea for half the amount United had paid, Ferguson – not surprisingly, given the nature of fans and certain sections of the media was accused of gross incompetence.

Veron would be among the most extravagant examples of a tall reputation disappearing under the burden of expectation, but the history of the game is littered with others, certainly enough to have tempered the tendency of supporters to rush to pre-judgment of the capabilities of recruits – either approvingly or dismissively – before they have even been brought to trial.

There has also been sufficient chronicling in recent years of the economic weakness of Celtic and Rangers in relation to the most populous and richest European countries. The Parkhead club may have returned momentous financial figures in terms of turnover and profit over the past few seasons, but they are impressive only in a Scottish context and nothing like weighty enough to allow Strachan (this applies also to Smith at Ibrox) to choose his prospective signings from anything other than the middle-to-lower tiers of available merchandise.

In an interview in The Scotsman at the start of last season, Strachan concisely articulated his challenge. "If great players have, say, five assets, we are working largely with twos and threes. As coaches, what we have to do is try improve the threes into fours and the twos into threes".

Neither the history of expensive failures nor the evidence of the Old Firm's financial limitations, however, seems to have impacted on those supporters who continue to clamour for "big-name", expensive signings. Indeed, they appear, disappointingly, to remain in the majority.

In a newspaper 'hotline' yesterday, a Celtic fan, clearly agitated by the apparent inactivity of Strachan in the market, said that, despite reports of numerous names on the manager's list, nothing seems to be getting done.

"I hope," he added, "we're not spending our time haggling behind the scenes over cash instead of getting moves completed."

This kind of naivety seems misplaced in the present day. Of course Strachan and Peter Lawwell, like managers and chief executives everywhere, will be haggling over cash. They would be failing in their remit if they were not.

The complexities of the modern market, often involving numerous interested parties (among whom the player himself frequently has the least influential voice), can make the formerly straightforward business of buying a player difficult and protracted. But it is underpinned by one universal truth: disappointment is in-built and no club, no matter how resourceful, ever gets everybody they want.