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The summer is here and teams are readying their chequebooks for the opening of the transfer window, as managers up and down the country look to improve their squads ahead of the new season.
Some business has been wrapped up already, such as Rickie Lambert’s Liverpool switch, while others wait patiently, examining their options and trying to get the best players at the right price, as nobody wants to pay over the odds for a player who could flatter to deceive.
Obviously teams do not want to lose their best players and will look to ask for exorbitant amounts if they are to be tempted into a sale, but the likes of Tottenham Hotspur found out last summer that throwing large sums of money at a club does not necessarily get you a wonderful player.
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Everybody also remembers the £35million that Liverpool paid for Andy Carroll, and Squawka has already noted a few players that, while still good players, are not worth the fees currently being quoted to capture their services this summer. Here’s five to keep your eye on.
Adam Lallana (Southampton)
Poor old Southampton look like they could be completely dissected this summer having already lost manager Mauricio Pochettino to Spurs and striker Rickie Lambert to Liverpool, but they are digging their heels in with everybody else in order to stave off the vultures.
Liverpool may not be done with the Saints just yet, though, as they have lined up Lallana, and with a bid in the region of £25m turned away already, you feel as though the Reds need know when to walk away.
There is no doubt Lallana is a very good player and had a fine season, but to suggest that he is worth £30m seems excessive, given that so much of career has been forged in the lower leagues and he has no experience in European football at all, with just a handful of international appearances to his name.
Aged 26, he is now in his prime and there is little chance of improving even further, and nine goals represents a season’s best tally for the Saints’ playmaker, while five assists is the same amount the much-maligned Fernando Torres achieved this season.
With cheaper options like Xherdan Shaqiri available and looking for moves, Liverpool should just accept that Southampton simply do not want to sell, as Lallana is unlikely to be able to live up to such a hefty price-tag.
Luke Shaw (Southampton)
Shaw appears to be the most sought-after player in the Premier League currently after breaking through the ranks at Southampton, with seemingly every club that finished above the Saints seemingly keen on snaring his signature.
And while we should never discount the importance of any position on the pitch, £30m on a left-back seems awfully steep given that it is the role you would generally put the less-talented members of your side in during Sunday League park football.
Shaw will only turn 19 later this month and has just one full season under his belt. While he may have undoubted promise, that is a massive price-tag placed upon such young shoulders that a still maturing body could yet struggle under.
His contested duels are somewhat impressive, but Shaw perhaps still has plenty to learn, having made just 37 interceptions in his 35 appearances, when a player in his position should really be achieving two per games.
Given the amount of possession Southampton often had, one could perhaps forgive him, but for an attacking left-back, he has created just the 33 chances and has just the one assist to show for everything, suggesting that any clubs interested are paying for potential that may never come, as opposed to the finished article one would hope for with that sort of expenditure.
Fabio Borini (Liverpool)
He may have had a decent season and scored some important goals, but Sunderland should not be fooled into paying a reported £12m to sign him permanently, especially given he has rarely managed to stay at any club in his professional career for so long as a year.
Borini has suffered numerous injury problems over the years as well and if Liverpool are that keen to offload him in order to make room for new recruits ahead of their Champions League campaign, then no team should be looking to pay over £10m for a cast-off.
With just one international cap to his name, as well, he is hardly the sort of marquee signing that really warrants such a large fee from a club like Sunderland and just seven goals in his season-long loan hardly made him a top marksman in their fight against the drop.
Those goals came with a conversion rate of just 14% and he only set up a further two, so if Sunderland wish to spend that kind of money on a striker, they should be looking for somebody a little more proven than a man who has scored just 17 top flight goals in his career.
William Carvalho (Sporting Lisbon)
Pretty sure that if we did a show of hands, there would be few with their upper extremities raised to claim they have actually seen Carvalho play live. Basically, in a similar sense to the case with Shaw, we think £35m might be a bit excessive for a player that still goes under the bracket of ‘potential’.
Lord knows how many potential stars have disappeared into obscurity and it would appear that a lot of the fuss around him appears to be the club he is at, given that suitors Manchester United also signed Cristiano Ronaldo from Sporting.
He’s done enough to make Portugal’s World Cup squad and we hope he has a chance to impress us, because at the age of 22 now, the ‘potential’ bracket is drawing to a close.
He’s managed four goals in 30 starts despite being classed as more of a defensive midfielder, but such a large price-tag seems extravagant for a man that still has just three substitute appearances for his national team.
Eliaquim Mangala (Porto)
On a personal note, I have seen Mangala play just twice this season and in games against Atletico Madrid and Sevilla, he failed to impress, with his performance against the latter being somewhere in the region of woeful.
Given that rumours were already circling about a £35m move to Manchester City, one tries not to judge a player based on three hours of football, but given they were two high-profile European fixtures, is that the sort of player City would want to blow such a large amount of money on, given the Financial Fair Play restrictions already being held against them?
With Demichelis having proven himself at last and Matija Nastasic still to come back, one would think a first choice centre-back would not be a priority for City currently, especially at that sort of price.
Mangala managed to win just six tackles and five interceptions in his six Europa League fixtures and wasn’t much more successful in the Champions League either, so it would seem that a lot of his reputation is built on his prowess in the opposition box, as opposed to defending his own and the price being quoted is not something he can really justify.
