Rookie Mistakes of the Premier League Transfer Window

The January transfer window has swung open once more. Let the bidding commence!

Bright-eyed young footballers, yet to really cut their professional teeth, drool at the prospect of a move to a Premier League giant and of a deal which will see them earn more, in thousands of pounds per week, than the number of minutes they have registered for the first team.

Contract signed. Thirst for attention quenched. Hunger for success satisfied. Curiously, the teenage sensation, which your club thought worthy of a four-year deal at £50,000 a week, struggles to reproduce a flash of genius every weekend.

Now blinded by the limelight and stifled by the pressure, the price tag begins to feel much tighter around his neck. And as a young man with so much promise ends up more David Bentley than David Beckham, the watching world scratch their heads as to where it all went wrong.

The spiraling cost of young talent in the sport has long since reached a tipping point, but the Premier League could still help to restore some balance by looking to the NFL – and in particular to the idea of rookie contracts.

Elite clubs are now so desperate to find the next Messi that they will gamble on the faintest sparkle in the hope of unearthing a gem – relinquishing all power over to the player in the process.

In 2011, NFL club owners (and veteran players) who were equally frustrated, when drafting the best players out of college, introduced this elegant yet simple solution.

The ‘Rookie Contract’ essentially governs the maximum and the minimum a player can earn in his first four years in the league, depending on how high they were taken in the draft (how highly they were sought after.)

Rookies (or more specifically their agents) will negotiate an amount of guaranteed money, but the headline figure quoted for the value of a contract is dependent on a players’ performance.

Play well. Hit all of your targets. And you’ll get your money.

Get injured, cut, or allow your performances to slide and you may only be eligible to receive the money you were guaranteed.

Imagine how this might impact the stuttering careers of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Jack Wilshere, Phil Jones and Daniel Sturridge, to name only but a few English starlets whose development seems to have flat-lined since bursting onto the scene.

The Ox is perhaps the perfect example: A supremely gifted individual who is reported to be earning £65k-per-week at Arsenal, despite not scoring more than two goals in any of his five seasons with the Gunners.

Similarly, Wilshere is on a staggering £90,000 a week at the same club, despite making a mere 14 appearances in the league last year and further injury having prevented him from stepping foot on the Emirates turf at all this season.

Interestingly, even the aptly named ‘guaranteed’ money is dependent on behaviour. Get caught persistently smoking, inhaling laughing gas, passed out outside a nightclub, drunk-driving or boxing in your kitchen and the club have the option to cancel the guaranteed amount remaining on your contract.

Granted, the notion is tailored to fit a league structure, college-draft system and a salary cap, which are totally alien to the Premier League, but with some tweaking, the rookie contract could be the answer for players under the age of 23, with undoubted talent, but who have yet to prove their long-term worth to a club.

Given Eden Hazard’s irrepressible form as he led Chelsea’s successful title charge last season, you would have been hard-pressed to find a Blues fan who didn’t believe he was worth his jaw-dropping £185,000 a week wage.

With his side languishing in the lower half of the table this season, and Hazard yet to score a single league goal, the club’s hands are tied. Powerless but to continue to pay him his full wage, as he seemingly attempts to force through a move to Real Madrid.

But footballer’s careers are often admittedly short. They require immense skill and demand a huge level of both dedication and sacrifice. No one can rightly condemn them for trying to make as much as they can, while they can.

The rise of Young Lions like Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling, John Stones and Dele Alli distract us from the failures of the previous generation. And so, we reward another raft of teenagers, yet to actually accomplish anything in the game, with more money, fully guaranteed by even longer contracts.

‘Maybe this group will be different!’

History rolls its eyes as it prepares to repeat itself.

For Alli’s impressive start to the season, in which he has racked up five goals and three assists, he has seen his salary increase by a staggering 600 per cent in under a year after signing a new Tottenham contract.

Earlier this week, the midfielder penned a new five-and-a-half-year deal that will see his £12,000 per week rocket to £25,000. Alli was earning just £3,500 when he signed from MK Dons on February 2 last year.

Meanwhile, Kane is set to double his salary at White Hart Lane, despite the fact that he signed his current contract less than a year ago.

And while it’s difficult to deny that these two players haven’t earned a bump, for their blistering form. There can also be little doubt, that Spurs are desperate to appease two of their brightest prospects (as the vultures begin to circle overhead) with absolutely no guarantee that the pair will continue along their current trajectory or even stay in North London past the summer.

As with any investment, the value of a player’s contract must be able to fall just as easily as it may rise. But with the absence of a salary cap (an argument for another day perhaps) clubs aren’t forced to learn from their rookie mistake and salaries are simply further inflated as a result.

While no one can deny that Ronaldo and Messi have earned every penny by virtue of their seemingly endless desire to improve, the same cannot be said for an endless list of mediocre footballers that are made into millionaires for just a handful of half-decent performances.

It is almost unheard of for an NFL ‘journeyman’ to retire filthy rich. Thus the only way to consistently earn such dizzying amounts of money, over the course of an entire career, is to play consistently brilliantly.