a question and a comment: As far as Vela's skill level being seen frequently in the Championship. Would you say that it's due to Vela's deteriorating skills, or just because his skills aren't and never were anything that is particularly out of the ordinary for the Championship. I agree that it will be interesting to see how Rooney does. I don't necessarily think much can be taken from the results. Rooney is now 34. From my observations (not scientific), the decline due to age is not linear. I suspect that most feel Rooney had begun his age related decline before he entered MLS. Just for reference, I am listing the stats from the past 2 seasons (I am omitting open cup but including mls playoffs because I wanted to keep comparisons within mls) 2017/18 EPL 12ga in 2286 min (1ga/191 min) 2017/18 MLS 18ga in 1641 min (1ga/91 min) 2018/19 MLS 18ga in 2426 min (1ga/135 min) If I had to take a stand on which league is stronger, I probably would go with the Championship. I think there is an awful lot of uncertainty about how far apart the leagues are and also the relative qualities top to bottom (ie 1st place team vs 1st place team and 10th place team vs 10th place team etc as well as the variance top to bottom...and other things). I think what bsky said about the bottom and middle of the roster is absolutely correct. MLS spends at the top of the roster but the typical team doesn't have the depth...or even close to the depth that Championship teams have. (I think it is also a big reason for the historical dominance of LIga Mx over MLS teams)
i think Vela is a very good player and being worth 15m is an accomplishment. There are also a lot of players who are as good in the championship it appears. I think it is “out of the ordinary” as these elite players represent only a small percentage of championship players. I have traditionally thought that MLS had much better high end players but lacked the depth compared to the Championship but now it seems that the English 2nd division also has very high end talent - furthermore, these elite players are likely on the way up the ladder rather than down like the best players largely are in MLS. I think my assumption still holds true for the B2 (MLS has higher top end but less depth) but haven’t looked into it. Wrt Rooney’s stats, he moved down levels and increased his scoring rate significantly - not much argument between those two levels IMO. Let’s see how he does now - that’s a reasonably proxy for level IMO. If age was an issue it sure didn’t show when he stepped down to MLS as his scoring rate exploded - seems a bit convenient that it wasn’t an issue then but is now.
Something has always seemed lopsided about transfermarkt's values. Mitrovic is actually at 25M Euros currently, but the number two most valuable player in the league is 29-year-old Tom Cairney of Fulham, who has never played at a level higher than the Championship and who is so amazing that he's got all of 2 caps for Scotland, that World Power of international football. He's valued by transfermarkt at the same 15M Euros as Carlos Vela. I have a hard time believing that a guy with 2 Scotland caps could be close in quality to the player with 72 Mexico caps (and a whole bunch more turned down).
dont look at individual numbers but the totality of them for a better perspective. there are a lot of high end players in the championship and just as arena said about chicharito, “[vela] wouldn’t be the best player in the [championship]”.
On Cairney, he was Fulham’s Player of the Season in 2017 and Championship Team of the Year two years in a row in 17 and 18.
It must have been a different Tom Cairney who played for Fulham in the Premier League last season then. And Hull before that with Altidore.
I'm suggesting that the totality of them seems fishy. A bunch of players who've never played above the Championship would be top 7 values in MLS according to transfermarkt. Perhaps their numbers are skewed because those values are based at least partly on historical transfer fees in England? Which everyone seems to agree are inflated, particularly so for the English players.
Thank you for clarifying the Vela question. As far as the Rooney comparison, as you say, his scoring exploded (more than doubled when he went from EPL to MLS). That, however was in the same season, which should minimize the age variable somewhat. If you compare 2017/18 MLS to 2018/19 MLS there was a very significant decrease in production (50% decrease) per minute. Whether that was due to age or other factors it is impossible to tell for sure but it is definitely plausible (I would argue probable) that age was a factor. If his production declines further it will be difficult to impossible to determine how much is/will be due to age and how much will be due to other factors (league quality for example). FWIW, I would expect that his production would decline regardless because I agree that the Championship is at a higher level than MLS. That being said, I still don't think it would give any meaningful gauge of the relative levels of the two leagues. If, for example, he cuts the his rate from 1ga/135 min (last year in MLS) to 1 ga/200 min how would you gauge the levels between Championship and MLS when you remember that 2 years ago (2017/18) he was at 1ga/190min in EPL? Right now, there is far to little data (3 games) to make any projections. Another FWIW: I really do beleive that the Championship is a superior league. That being said, if makes me wonder even more when guys like Ream do so well in that league. It's not like he is barely hanging on with the last place team in the Championship. He's 32 now, starting every game with a team that is 4pts out of first place....at this rate he could be in the EPL next year. If that happens, and he is still on the team, I can see a few heads exploding when trying to justify starting places on the team. Edit: I sometimes get confused with my arguments due to the seasons in Europe and MLS not lining up. I was thinking of this current season at Derby County being different than the EPL/MLS comparison but it really isn't. (one piggybacks on the other so it is really just a continuation). I do, however, stand by my reasoning for this reason: If you look at Rooney's production this past MLS season, he had 17ga in the first 19 games. He missed a few of the last 11 games in the season (not in squad and red card suspension), but in the last 7 games that he played, he had a total of one assist. From what I have observed over the years, an older player (any sport) often begins well but as the season wears him down, his performance falls off strikingly. Obviously his performance didn't degrade due to improvements in MLS. My guess is that age wasn't a help.
You are so right. He played a few seasons for some of the worst teams in the EPL. My bad. I don't think that changes the fact that he seems quite over-valued at 15M Euros.
but vela number isn’t inflated by the LA market? I get it, you don’t want to acknowledge that the championship may have as good players as the top of MLS. would it help to look at this years transfers? They had 15 players transferred for over 7m - that’s pretty consistent with the numbers I listed. would MLS have 15 players valued at that level?
His contract runs until 2024. Seems about right that someone would have to pay Fulham about £12 million to buy him. Especially for someone who has scored 32 goals in 172 games for Fulham. What would it cost them to replace him ?
a simple look on google shows that a likely reason Cairney didn’t get Scotland calls is because he was hoping to play for England. He was actually born in England but has eligibility for Scotland through his father.
From Wikipedia: "Cairney earned his first call up from Scotland national team in March 2017.[126] Following his first call up from the senior side, Cairney said he wanted to establish himself in the Scotland national team." He still has only 2 caps in 3 years. He also played for the Scotland U19s and 21s many years ago. No caps at any age level for England. Maybe he was holding out for England (and maybe still is), but at 29 and pretty much a career Championship player it's gotta be doubtful the guy would ever get a cap for current England.
I'd guess you're correct, due to the massively inflated transfer fees paid by English clubs (particularly) for English players.
Again, look at google. Even in 2018, there was a lot of discussion about him and England. I agree that it wasn’t a good call for him to wait but it clearly explains his lack of Scotland calls that you were keying on.
It's just the going rate. At a quick count, more than 50 players were bought for more than 15 millions euros in the summer by Premier League clubs. I don't think Fulham particularly need the money either. Sorry you are so upset about a valuation on a website and about transfer fees English clubs pay.
Again, we’re comparing to MLS which has a history of vastly overpaying for North American talents such as Vela. Seems apples to apples.
I don't know how the "LA market" affects transfermarkt values. I don't know if any single club affects their values (I kind of doubt it). I don't know how transfermarkt creates any of their values, but it seems like surely it's gotta be more than talking straight out of their ass. It's not that I don't want to acknowledge that the Championship may have as good players as the top of MLS, it's that trying to correlate player quality to tranfermarkt estimations is crazy. That's the point. Cairney has had no more stellar a career than Tim Ream. Nearly identical, in fact.
I don’t think that a player porpoising with his team between the major and minor leagues via promotion and relegation is actually a major league players. Ream/Fulham looked great in the minors and then looked terrible in the majors - they were the same team just the levels are so different.
Oh, piss off. I'm not "upset about a valuation on a website". I'm disagreeing with another poster who is citing transfermarkt's valuations as if they gave any sort of indication of player quality when comparing MLS vs the Championship.
Yet you can't even understand the website properly to work out a players career. So I am not sure how you can disagree with a valuation from that position of ignorance. A player is worth what another team will pay for them (unless they have a release clause like Haaland and Kante)
because vela’s value is in large part based upon the value that LA paid for him. I don’t understand why you strenuously ignore evidence that MLS is a minor league somewhere between Championship and B2. You consistently do this. Here you want to disregard transfermarkt values as a proxy for player value because it doesn’t fit your narrative. How do you explain that the current values for the best championship players match pretty well with historical transfer values from the championship? Is that just luck that they’re right on top of each other? next, you want to downplay championship values because of English bias even though a third of their sold players over 7m are sold outside of England. You also ignore that MLS player values are impacted by the elevated prices that MLS pays both in terms of fees and salary. If transfermarkt is undervaluing MLS players, we should see it in players sold. The only high value player sold by MLS recently has scored less in the major leagues that Bobby wood did in his first year.
Overpaying on salary and overpaying on transfer fees are separate things. You're citing transfer fee value, not pay. Altidore came on a free. In fact, Sunderland paid millions to trade Altidore for Jermaine Defoe. Bradley came for 900k more than transfermarkt valued him at at the time. Vela came for 5.7M when he was valued at 11.4M by transfermarkt.