A composite image of Erling Haaland and Winston Bogarde. Credit: Graham Chadwick/ALLSPORT and Mike Hewitt/Getty Images
Erling Haaland has recently put pen to paper on a 10-year deal at Man City, and outspoken pundit, Stan Collymore, has compared it to Winston Bogarde’s deal at Chelsea.
Barcelona and Real Madrid couldn’t land Haaland in the end, because of a record deal handed to the Norwegian which once again changes the footballing landscape in England.
Despite the evident outlay, Man City will bid €100m for a Barcelona star in the summer it would seem, so either PSR doesn’t apply to them or they are doing some very creative accounting at this point – particularly when you consider that they still have various charges hanging over them which could lead to relegation.
Erling Haaland’s deal makes business sense
In any event, Collymore, despite the comparison, believes City have done good business.
“Ten years, two years, one year, it makes no difference. All it does is give the player the whip hand,” he said to CaughtOffside for his exclusive column.
“Winston Bogarde all those years ago at Chelsea, he was on 40 or 60 odd grand a week and he wasn’t going to move anywhere. They weren’t going to get him out. He just stuck it out and Erling Haaland could do that.
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“[…] I think that Manchester City will look at it and say if we lost him to Real Madrid in a few years time, we’ve probably saved ourselves £300m/£400m in the grand scheme of things. How?
Man City’s intelligence seen in Erling Haaland contract terms
“Think about how much would it cost them to buy Erling Haaland two or three more times? The answer is anything between £150m/£200m per transfer, so if you add that up, it’ll be somewhere in the region of £400m/£500m.
“Let’s say the contract is worth £700m/£800m. If he leaves before the end of it then they’ve actually made a really sound, solid financial decision that even in the hair brained bonkers world of football makes business sense to them.”
It’s an interesting way of looking at things and also puts the way that Chelsea are handing out long-term contracts to players in perspective.
When you look at the likes of Newcastle, Tottenham and others, they’re all having to pore over every incoming and outgoing transfer whereas City are riding roughshod over PSR because of the intelligent way that they are structuring their deals for the future.