Focus on West Ham:West Ham United have long been known as the academy of football. The club has produced a long list of illustrious England players but locating emerging talent is not getting any easier. The Hammers are not alone in relying on high transfer fees and big wages to fuel their challenge for European football, yet Upton Park has become synonymous this summer with the spiralling prices in English football.
The influences of a record-breaking €3.5 billion TV deal and the emergence of foreign owners with big ambitions and deep pockets is transforming the playing field.
Since coming under control of an Icelandic consortium headed by Eggert Magnusson last year, West Ham have invested around €59.3 million in new players. Wages are imposing, with Matthew Upson, Lucas Neill and Scott Parker believed to be earning in excess of €74,000 a week.
Neill is hardly in the highest bracket of Premiership performers but he is understood to be on wages of around €104,000 - far more than Liverpool were willing to spend on the full back.
West Ham also offered Darren Bent significantly more than Tottenham, though the forward opted for north rather than east London.
The average Premiership player is soon expected to see his salary rise to more than €1.5 million a year. In its annual review of football finance, Deloitte predicted even greater increases.
The example of Leeds United lingers over football although there is confidence clubs like West Ham are operating from firmer foundations.
Peter Sharkey, a football business analyst, believes the landscape has changed due to the global explosion of interest in football.
"In general, financial management at football clubs is much better," he said.
"The clubs are planning like any business and the Premiership is more and more a place for billionaires rather than millionaires.
"It's true Eggert Magnusson seems to be running West Ham like a top-six club and it does have a knock-on. The agents are aware of the money coming into football. If you finish bottom of the Premiership you will get €74 million which is more money than Chelsea got for winning the league two years ago."
When the Sunderland chairman, Niall Quinn, expressed his concern at how money was flowing through football, he was ticked off by Harry Redknapp, who regards the situation as a result of "supply and demand".
His chief executive at Portsmouth, Peter Storrie, has pinpointed a key change as the cost of overseas players catching up with the traditionally high value of English players.
"We all know that the price of players in England tends to be inflated," he said.
"In Europe generally you can get better deals but that is probably beginning to even itself up."
The Premier League has not formally expressed any concern over spending but there is an understandable hope academies will not get overlooked.
Mick McGuire, the deputy chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, said: "It should be remembered that the success of the league is down to the players, their performances and the show that the league offers," he said.
Guardian Service
