On 17 August 2012, Robin Van Persie transferred to Manchester Utd. The fee was £22.5 million, plus £1.5 million if Man U won the Premier League or Champions League title within the duration of the initial contract – which was for four years.
So the question was raised: why spend £24m plus a salary of £200,000 a week for four years on a player that will have little or no value when his contract ends, and who is highly unlikely to want to give up such a salary at any time during the contract?
Multiply the weekly salary by 52 and you get £10.4m a year. Multiply by four and you get £41.6m. Add in £24m transfer fee ad you get £65,600,000 spent on that player written off over four years.
Transfer fees like this are added to salaries and accounted for over the length of the contract – which is how we get £16.25m a year. That is what it is costing the club.
Worse, if injury and age take their toll, then although the money is acocunted for over four years it could be effectively written off over two years.
Of course emotionally Manchester United fans will say that yes it was a good deal in that he won them the league last year and I wouldn’t blame them for that. When you see your side win the league, you don’t start counting the cost.
But this year… he has not played since scoring the winner against Arsenal, and at present there is no sign of him playing nor a date on which he will be expected to return.
Now that is not utterly unexpected – for if we look at the number of games he played for Arsenal each season we see a sorry tale…
RVP League games for Arsenal
2004–05
26
2005–06
24
2006–07
22
2007–08
15
2008–09
28
2009–10
16
2010–11
25
2011–12
38
So he played one complete season – his last with us, but otherwise varied between 15 and 28 games out of 38 league games. Between two fifths and three quarters of the games he could have played in.
Now as we might remember he actually did manage 38 games for Man U in his first season there. But this year, the old injury curse is back.
What this tells us is that last season he played 38 games and cost Man U £16,400,000, which equates to £431,579 per game. Was it a good deal? Quite probably since United won the league.
But that payment is going on game by game, even when Van Persie is not playing. And it will continue not just this season, but for the next two, by which time, even if he does again throw off the injury jinx that haunted him at Arsenal will take him to a stage in his career where his powers will be declining.
There are a few conclusions that we can draw from this.
First, one of the most obvious problems with Man U this season is that RVP is not there. They need him, and he helped them win the title last season.
Second, in buying him and putting him on that contract a year ago, Six Alex Ferguson, must have known that
a) he (Sir A) was not going to be around during the latter stages of the RVP contract to listen to the argument about how an injury prone 34 year old was getting £200,000 a week.
b) if he could just keep RVP fit for one season it would be worth it if it won the league, and there was a chance of him staying fit for one year. After that RVPs injuries would be a problem but then he would be getting older so wouldn’t play much anyway
c) having bought RVP and put him on such a salary there would be little cash around for Man U to go on further spending sprees. Yes they could keep buying, but not the three or four players a year that they need in order to find the one or two who can slot into the team and keep up the challenge for the title
d) the fans had become so used to dominance of the league that they would quickly revolt if the service was not provided – but he (Sir Alex) would not be there to worry about it. His legacy would be complete, and the press, who generally only deal with one issue at a time, would fawn to him as they had done for years, and his poor successor would be hung out to dry.
In short, that transfer was done to allow Sir Alex Ferguson to go out on a high – but without any thought about the future of the club, and its next manager, and how it would have difficulty in making a lot of major purchases in coming years.
Of course Man U are not useless without RVP, but they are not league winners. RVP would sooner be playing – but still he has his income, and I am sure he will be putting some of it to one side each week for his future.
Every Arsenal fan knows what the frustration of RVP injuries feels like. We know what it is like for him to play for the Netherlands when carrying an injury and then be out for months on end.
All we can say to Man U fans is, well, yes, we suffered too. But then we never put him on £10,400,000 a year.
Maybe Moyes should have thought twice before accepting the job.