Has that 15-million been well spent — or did Newcastle want Alan Shearer more than they actually needed him?
SOCCER: Paul Wilson
ACCORDING to the feedback from the Atlanta Games, Britain is a cash-strapped uncompetitive backwater which has lost the knack of producing sporting heroes. All the odder then, that an English football club has just set a new world transfer record for an English player.
Alan Shearer is nothing if not a hero. A comfortable inheritor of the great English centre-forward tradition which encompasses Roy of the Rovers as well as Lawton and Lofthouse, the clean-cut England striker is that most unfashionable and uncomplicated of footballing anachronisms, an ideal role model. Neither this nor his undisputed scoring ability necessarily makes him worth 15-million, but most of the shock-horror headlines of the past week related to the fact that an English club had signed the record cheque.
It is almost as if we would have preferred Milan or Barcelona to come along with the silly money and whisk Shearer from our shores. We would not then have considered the fee so excessive, we would have taken a quiet pride in making Italian or Spanish eyes water as a fair price for obtaining the very best of English talent.
Newcastle throwing their money around makes us nervous. The game has gone mad. The roof will fall in. Yet Newcastle, the club who picked up 7-million for Andy Cole, would probably have accepted at that point in the 1994-95 season that 15-million for Shearer in 1996 was not excessive or illogical, but simply the going rate.
Is anyone really worth that much? Possibly not. Put the question another way. Is Shearer twice as good as Cole, or three times the player Chris Sutton is? Thought so. Looked at in a purely footballing context, Newcastle have hardly gone out on a limb.
Yet there are several intriguing aspects to the deal. The Bosman ruling was supposed to drive prices down, not up. In time Shearer’s move could come to be seen as fin de siecle old-style transfer market, a last spending splurge before freedom of contract obliges clubs to act more cautiously, but somehow one doubts it.
Major transfers always tend to have an immediate inflationary effect. Blackburn now have 15-million to spend, for a start, and Manchester United will be wanting to match Newcastle in both the goalscoring and attention-grabbing departments.
And the way Shearer managed to leave Ewood, very much against his employers’ wishes while still notionally under contract, was more typical of the new style of player-club relationship than the old. The casual observer may be wondering what is the point of a contract at all if a single escape clause effectively undermines the whole agreement, and all but the very biggest football clubs will increasingly find themselves pondering the same thing.
The Bosman effect is one of polarisation, and at the top end of the scale, among the elite of clubs who can afford to pay wages of 30 000 a week, the huge transfer fee is unlikely to go out of fashion. As in the latest deal, rich clubs will find themselves trading with each other, particularly if players are allowed to write clauses into their contracts which amount to guarantees that a club will not only attain but maintain a certain level of success.
What level of success Newcastle can expect with Shearer in their side will be the talking point of the new season. Kevin Keegan described his capture as a signing for the people of Newcastle, which may have been a clever way of admitting that the club wanted Shearer more than they actually needed him. For in business terms Shearer is almost a luxury. Newcastle are already trading at capacity and will be unable to shift any more season tickets on the back of their new buy.
Prior to last week they had a waiting list of 12 000 for seats at the 36 000-capacity St James’ Park, so the market was not exactly in need of stimulation. Newcastle have plans for a 75 000-seater stadium, which few doubt they could fill, but it may be several years down the line and could involve leaving town.
St James’ Park can be expanded by only around 8 000 seats, but that would cost more than Shearer and the end result would still not be on the scale Sir John Hall has in mind. So Newcastle are going to have to sell a lot of shirts to recoup their outlay.
Merchandising is big business these days, but not that big, and Newcastle shirts have always sold well in any case. If there is a business motive behind the transfer, it is more likely to be connected to the club’s impending flotation on the stock market, when Hall could quickly see a return on his investment.
>From Keegan’s point of view, the benefits of having Shearer in the side are obvious, even if it will ultimately squeeze out Ferdinand, Asprilla, Beardsley or Ginola, all players the manager has gone out of his way to vigorously defend.
That little local difficulty aside, Keegan still has to face the fact that it was defensive shortcomings which cost Newcastle the title last season.
While an extra 20 or 30 goals may well obviate the problem in a positive way, the addition of Shearer to the Newcastle roster does not quite invoke the chill which would have descended on all the other Premiership starters had the same player ended up at Manchester United.
Alex Ferguson’s double-winning team struggled only for goals last season, relying a shade too heavily on Eric Cantona’s penchant for scoring, and the replacement of Cole by Shearer would have given Old Trafford an enviable cutting edge at home and quite possibly in Europe. For preventing the Premiership turning into a one-horse race, and preserving the possibility of at least two or three runners contesting the finish, we are apparently indebted to someone at Blackburn, who according to Manchester United’s version of events would not countenance Shearer moving to Old Trafford.
This sounds a little like face-saving, and overlooks the possibility that Shearer might have preferred a move to the North East, but somewhere on a Lancashire golf course Kenny Dalglish probably allowed himself a wry smile.
Dalglish was the manager who brought Shearer to Blackburn four years ago, amid widespread fears that he had paid over the odds at 3,3-million, and Dalglish was in charge when Rovers won the Premiership title.
It is a matter for conjecture now whether Blackburn’s success could have been sustained had Dalglish remained manager, or whether even Dalglish’s pulling power could have kept Shearer at Ewood after his exploits in Euro 96.
There has been talk of Dalglish returning, but if that was on the cards surely it would have been Dalglish and not Walker trying to persuade Shearer to stay. With any luck, the reasons for Dalglish taking a back seat will be illuminated in his forthcoming autobiography, but that will be of little help to Walker, who can only look enviously at the Newcastle operation.
Hall and Keegan have basically pinched his idea, as well as his striker, though they are pitching to a much more receptive audience and refusing to define their ambition.
Walker always insisted there was a limit — he intended to take Blackburn to a certain point then leave them. So much for Lancastrian common sense.
Blackburn are arguably further from where Walker wants them to be than they have ever been. Only time will tell if the balance sheet adds up, but the brash Geordies have established a clear lead in the confidence stakes with a much simpler maxim: Keep on Spending.