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Monograph

Thursday, January 29, 2004

Still an imperfect market

The transfer market in the premiership still seems to be supremely dysfuntional. In the last week my club (I own them, no really) Newcastle United have sold two players.

One was Carl Cort, who we sold to Wolves for £2m. Cort is young, and was once reckoned to be the next big thing. So much so that three years ago we gave Wimbledon £7m for him. He's been injured almost ever since and has only played a handful of games.

The other was Nolberto Solano, who's captain of Peru, one of the most accurate crossers of the ball in the Premiership and a dab hand at free kicks and corners. He's also never been in trouble, rarely gets booksed, scores the odd goal and is generally a midfielder that most of the league would like to have. It seems we're selling him to Aston Villa.

He will also cost £2m, which seems like a bargain.

My suspicion is that either there isn't actually a 'market for players' at all, just a lot of individual markets 'the supply and demand for Carl Cort' rather than 'The supply and demand for strikers' or that the individual circumstances of buyers and sellers are disrupting the market no end.

Meanwhile the ever on the money nufc.com have just put up a tribute to 'wor Nobby' as he was known

158 league starts, 14 as sub, 29 goals.
19 FA Cup starts, 2 goals.
10 League Cup starts, 2 as sub.
26 European starts, 4 as sub, 7 goals.

Thats a fantastic record for a midfielder. If all ours performed that well we'd have won something by now.