Buy-out clauses or options to buy existed for the five most over-paid players. This certainly helped the seller teams in the negotiations: Villarreal for Gabriel Paulista, Swansea for Wilfried Bony and Fiorentina for Juan Cuadrado.
The top level performances of Bernardo Silva and Ryan Bertrand explain the activation of the option to buy by Monaco, respectively Southampton. However, the current value of these players is well below the price paid.
Monaco and Southampton accepted to over-pay by considering the opportunities of development for the players concerned. This holds also true for Arsenal with regard to the signing of Gabriel Paulista. The three players have indeed the concrete possibility to become pillars of their national A-teams in the near future.
The cases of Wilfried Bony and Juan Cuadrado are different as they are already well established full internationals. They were primarily recruited within the context of the race for the Premier League title.
While Chelsea was also able to transfer other players – André Schürrle and Ryan Bertrand – at a higher price than expected, Manchester City was not able to do so. Chelsea could probably have got more from the permanent move of Fernando Torres. Nevertheless, his permanent move allowed the London club to save money for his salary.
The over-representation of deals between Italian clubs among the most under-paid transfers – Manolo Gabbiadini, Alfred Duncan, Daniele Gastaldello, Luca Antonelli and Gabriel Paletta – reflects the deep economic crisis of professional football in the country.
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