Money can buy you success

11/06/2009 | By More

Looking at the £80m Real Madrid have paid for Ronaldo you have to ask, is it good value? Well according to the stats ,the answer on value is not clear but on “will it bring success?”, pretty emphatic.

I’ve studied loads of things about football markets including some less than obvious statistics. One of these is whether buying good players pays dividends. The answer was much more emphatic that I ever expected.  There is a very high correlation of wages paid to league position.It seems money does buy success!

If you look at the 07/08 premier league season the correlation was near 90%. This meant that the league pretty much ended up with the lower spending teams near the bottom and the higher spending teams at the top. This would have been much higher if the free spending Newcastle had performed to their expected level. The big four, not only ended up in the top four but also have the top four wage bills.  What happened to the three teams with the lowest wage bill? Relegation.

Sorry, but if your club owner doesn’t have big pockets it’s unlikely you will ever challenge those that do.

Category: Using Bet Angel

About the Author ()

I left a good job in the consumer technology industry to go a trade on Betfair for a living way back in June 2000. I've been here ever since pushing very boundaries of what's possible on betting exchanges and loved every minute of it.

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