\n<\/p>\n
Arsenal must help shatter a ridiculous Moises Caicedo transfer record if they are to sign Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa this summer.<\/p>\n
Villa\u2019s valuation of Rogers \u2013 who Arsenal are \u201cclose\u201d to agreeing terms with<\/strong> \u2013 at \u00a3130m is no coincidence; it would land the Villans a record sell-on fee, blowing this current top 10 out of the water.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It is vanishingly rare for any transfer to have been completed in the last two decades without a Michael Edwards clause inserted which in some way benefits Liverpool<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Their modern success has been built on the foundations of prescient sales, impactful signings, add-ons and perhaps soon even buy-backs<\/strong> as they safeguard and future-proof their position at the forefront of the market.<\/p>\n Liverpool had one such option on Solanke but little reason to explore it for years after he left to join Bournemouth. Only 18 months after the England international moved to the south coast, the Cherries were relegated to the Championship.<\/p>\n That arguably accelerated Solanke\u2019s development. Two seasons in the second tier produced 44 goals and 16 assists in 86 appearances as he rediscovered his scoring touch and refined his overall game.<\/p>\n But it was the appointment of Andoni Iraola which really moved Bournemouth and Solanke to the next level. The 2023\/24 season marked his first Premier League hat-trick and Player of the Month award, attracting interest from Spurs.<\/p>\n Liverpool could have hijacked that club-record deal but they preferred to sit back and wait for a healthy pay-out to land in their bank account courtesy of a clause entitling them to 20% of any profits Bournemouth made on his sale.<\/p>\n If they had anything about them, the Reds would have engaged in a bidding war before pulling out to artificially drive up the price and their subsequent proceeds. Edwards was probably busy fiddling with the aircon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n As\u00a0former reserve team manager Warren Joyce once had it, Keane \u201cplayed against Real Madrid on a pre-season tour and Gareth Bale gave him a bit of a chasing,\u201d so Louis van Gaal decided against integrating him into the first team.<\/p>\n It was very much the spiritual contrast to Cristiano Ronaldo giving John O\u2019Shea the runaround<\/strong>.<\/p>\n A few loans later and Keane was sold to Burnley for \u00a32.5m, much to Joyce\u2019s disappointment.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be fair to Van Gaal, I met him in a bar in Portugal after he\u2019d left and he said \u2018you were right about Michael Keane, I was wrong\u2019,\u201d Joyce added in an interview years ago, by which point Keane had moved on to Everton for a cool \u00a325m.<\/p>\n Manchester United raked in a decent amount as a result but they were actually favourites to sign Keane themselves when the auction commenced in summer 2017<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Jose Mourinho instead settled for Victor Lindelof, who would outlast the Portuguese and about seven other managers at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It goes down as the biggest Academy sale in Liverpool history<\/strong> but the role of QPR cannot be airbrushed from Sterling\u2019s story.<\/p>\n The Hoops picked him up as a 10-year-old and navigated interest from far and wide well into Sterling\u2019s teenage years, going as far as considering giving the forward a first-team debut at 14.<\/p>\n But his departure was inevitable and Liverpool were the only club willing to offer \u00a3500,000 up front with up to \u00a32m more in bonuses.<\/p>\n That deal was ratified during the reign of Rafael Benitez, with Sterling breaking through under Kenny Dalglish before flourishing due to the threat of being sent on the first plane home by Brendan Rodgers.<\/p>\n After three seasons in the Anfield first team delivered a monumental title bottling as its peak, Sterling engaged in a bitter and controversial exit plan culminating in rejected contract offers, two snubbed Manchester City bids, the withdrawal from a pre-season tour squad and two days of missed training due to an apparent illness.<\/p>\n The \u00a349m Liverpool eventually held out for made Sterling the most expensive English footballer in history at the time, while securing QPR some extra funds on top of the parachute payments they would soon receive due to relegation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It is often held as one of Chelsea\u2019s biggest transfer mistakes but things could actually have been far worse.<\/p>\n And ever the politician, Mourinho made it sound like a masterclass in problem-solving and negotiation.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you have a player knocking on your door and crying every day that he wants to leave then you have to make a decision,\u201d he said in summer 2015, shortly before Wolfsburg made a gargantuan profit on the deadwood they inherited from Stamford Bridge 18 months prior.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Chelsea did a very good job. If De Bruyne stayed here, not happy, not motivated, wanting to leave, he stays here one more year and then we sell him for less than 50 per cent what we sold him for. In that moment it was very good business.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n If selling De Bruyne immediately or after another year were indeed Mourinho and Chelsea\u2019s only options then it is difficult to argue they took the wrong course.<\/p>\n But one-and-a-half seasons in the Bundesliga were more than enough for De Bruyne to prove his worth and improve his value, to the extent that Chelsea\u2019s add-on actually exceeded the fee they paid to sign the Belgian from Genk in the first place.<\/p>\n READ MORE<\/strong>: Mourinho insists he did not make De Bruyne \u2018mistake\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n The last Hull squad to play in the Premier League was quite the eclectic mix: Maguire, Andy Robertson, Jarrod Bowen, Tom Huddlestone and Shaun Maloney somehow didn\u2019t survive despite the combined coaching efforts of Mike Phelan and Marco Silva.<\/p>\n Maguire was the breakout star, the Players\u2019 and Fans\u2019 Player of the Year in his first and only full season with the Tigers, who cashed in for \u00a317m when the vultures of Leicester circled upon relegation.<\/p>\n Two years with the Foxes \u2013 and an inflatable unicorn-based England breakthrough in between \u2013 sent that valuation into the stratosphere; Maguire remains the most expensive defender in football history<\/strong>and Hull received a chunk of that record outlay.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n As the first professional club to show faith in the dormant but nascent brilliance of Semenyo, Bristol City are entitled to continue benefiting from his rise.<\/p>\n The \u00a310.5m they received from Bournemouth in January 2023 was doubled three years later when the Cherries flipped their own preposterous profit during a state of mild Manchester City panic.<\/p>\n Bristol City \u201cbelieved in me from the beginning and that will not be forgotten\u201d by Semenyo. The Robins will remain grateful for the intermittent financial reminders of his excellence.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t seem particularly fair that as the best team in the world, with the finest players, most talented coach, unlimited funds and a domestic league so in thrall to their monopoly that fixtures are shifted around to their advantage in European competition, PSG have developed that Chelsea knack of dominating the seller\u2019s market too.<\/p>\n No club should really be breaking their transfer record on Goncalo Ramos, not least on the back of a PSG season in which he started just 15 games. But AC Milan were happy to pay the Paris tax.<\/p>\n And even their biggest failures don\u2019t really hurt them. PSG signed Ekitike for around \u00a330m, wasted two years of his career and sold him to Eintracht Frankfurt, who almost immediately helped the Frenchman realise his potential.<\/p>\n Two seasons in the Bundesliga turned Ekitike into that most common of current footballing commodities \u2013 a Newcastle target Liverpool will sign anyway<\/strong> \u2013 and landed PSG 20 per cent of the initial \u00a369m Frankfurt made through his sale.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Chelsea are particularly well-versed in the art of selling players and engineering the majority of those deals to benefit them eventually.<\/p>\n There might not be many Academy graduates who make the grade for the Blues but Chelsea have enough alumni dotted around \u2013 and stocks in most if not all of them \u2013 to ultimatly take advantage somehow.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s probably the best academy in the world that anyone would want to go to and develop,\u201d Livramento himself said when he took his diploma to Southampton. \u201cMaybe one day,\u201d he added of the prospect of Chelsea activating a \u00a350m buy-back clause<\/strong>.<\/p>\n That never made sense after 34 appearances and an injury-disrupted spell on the coast, but Newcastle were willing to take the \u00a332m plunge in August 2023.<\/p>\n A sliding sell-on clause meant Chelsea were due almost half of that sum, meaning an initial \u00a35m sale ended up netting them \u00a320m in the long run.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The extent to which Barcelona entirely lost their financial sh*t and lumbered themselves with economic responsibilities still felt to this day should never be downplayed.<\/p>\n Losing Neymar to PSG triggered a catastrophic collective head loss; signing Dembele, Philippe Coutinho, Paulinho, Gerard Deulofeu, Nelson Semedo, Yerry Mina and Marlon Santos in response was sub-optimal.<\/p>\n Liverpool had Barca\u2019s pants down over Coutinho<\/strong> but it was Rennes who were able to capitalise most on the Dembele situation.<\/p>\n German media at the time stated that the French side put a clause into the small print of his \u00a313m move to Dortmund in the summer of 2016 entitling them to around \u00a317m of any subsequent sale above \u00a370m \u2013 which Barcelona\u2019s ludicrous \u00a3135.5m bid very much was.<\/p>\n So justifiably pleased with their work were Rennes that when Dembele\u2019s switch to the Nou Camp a year later was confirmed, the Ligue Un side released a back-patting statement about \u201cthe quality of Rennes\u2019 training and how the future Ballon d\u2019Or winner \u201ctook advantage of the ability of the club to make every effort to bring him to his highest level\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a ton of money for us,\u201d said Independiente Del Valle\u2019s honorary president Michel Deller of a windfall which outstripped their initial profit by about five times.<\/p>\n While Manchester United balked at paying \u00a34.5m for Caicedo, Brighton did not blink<\/strong>. The Seagulls might well have sensed that their investment would eventually down that inexorable path to Stamford Bridge.<\/p>\n But even in their wildest dreams, Ecuadorean club Independiente would have struggled to foresee Caicedo being moved on for nine figures at the end of an embarrassing battle between Chelsea and Liverpool<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The 20 per cent sell-on clause alone landed a fee at least twice as much as Independiente have directly received for any other player.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n10) Dominic Solanke \u2013 \u00a37.2m to Liverpool<\/strong><\/h2>\n
9) Michael Keane \u2013 \u00a37.5m to Manchester United<\/strong><\/h2>\n
8) Raheem Sterling \u2013 \u00a39m to QPR<\/strong><\/h2>\n
7) Kevin de Bruyne \u2013 \u00a310m to Chelsea<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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6) Harry Maguire \u2013 \u00a310.2m to Hull<\/strong><\/h2>\n
5) Antoine Semenyo \u2013 \u00a310.5m to Bristol City<\/strong><\/h2>\n
4) Hugo Ekitike \u2013 \u00a313.8m to Paris Saint-Germain<\/strong><\/h2>\n
3) Tino Livramento \u2013 \u00a315m to Chelsea<\/strong><\/h2>\n
2) Ousmane Dembele \u2013 \u00a317m to Rennes<\/strong><\/h2>\n
1) Moises Caicedo \u2013 \u00a323m to Independiente Del Valle<\/strong><\/h2>\n