What is the Market Value of Your Football Team?

With another season of English league football now concluded, it is almost time to look ahead to the following campaign and although transfer talk will surely dominate over the next couple of months, there are still plenty of opportunities to look back on what happened previously.

Because with all four professional divisions once again being keenly contested, the narrative of winners and losers has once again come to the fore and although some clubs will be popping the champagne corks, others will be dealing with the ignominy of relegation.

Now that the 2022/23 season is , it also provides us with another opportunity to take a data-driven deep dive and this time around we are going to look at the market values of teams up and down the country.

Which teams are topping their respective tables, who is punching above their weight and who are the outfits that have underperformed in relation to their overall values. These are the questions that we will soon look to answer.

This means a good a place to start as any is the Premier League and first, we will look at the top six if the table was ranked purely on market values alone:

To the surprise of very few, each of the members of the ‘big six’ group also finds themselves in the top half dozen when it comes to market values. However, they did not lock out each of the top six places in 2022/23.

Due to the market values of these six clubs, it would be fair to assume that they would have a monopoly on positions one to six – albeit in a shuffled order but as you can see this did not prove to be the case. 

With Chelsea only managing a 12th place finish in last season’s Premier League, their performances in the Premier League were nowhere near their current third-highest market value and local rivals Tottenham did not fare much better.

The drop off in comparison was nowhere near as big as the Blues above, but an eighth-place finish is not what chairman Daniel Levy would have been expecting for a club that is considered to be worth £642m. 

If we know that the ‘big six’ lock out each of the top half dozen berths in our market values league table, what does it mean for the three sides that will soon be plying their trade in the 2023/24 edition of the EFL Championship?

Here we can see that value stands for very little. The three clubs that suffered the drop, were not positioned 18th to 20th in terms of their market position. Southampton were 12th, Leeds 15th and Leicester 17th and here we see no correlation between relegation and the worth of the club.

Extend the Trend

But what if we look at the Premier League class of 2022/23 as a whole. We have seen no real correlation between the big six and the clubs that were relegated, but is there more of a pattern when we look at teams in midtable?

Here we have ranked each of the 20 Premier League clubs in terms of the difference between the market value ranking and their final place in the standings, which means it does not make good reading for Chelsea, as they have the biggest disparity between finish and market value. 

Then again, Southampton do not fare much better. Not only were the Saints relegated but they had a difference of eight places between the two metrics and here you could quite easily argue that bad recruitment was their undoing. 

At the other end of the scale, Fulham certainly punched above their weight at Craven Cottage. Promoted to the Premier League for 2022/23, they currently have the lowest valued team but managed a 10th place finish last season.

While only four clubs matched their league placing to their overall market value. Manchester City and Arsenal imitated their ability on the field of play, as they are currently first and second in terms of market values. Wolves and Nottingham Forest found parity in 13th and 16th respectively.

Across The Board

Of course, the Premier League is not the only professional division within English football and now it is time to see what stories can be gleaned from looking across the board and weighing up the values of each of the 92.

Let’s start in the Championship and it is good news for Burnley both on and off the pitch, as promotion to the Premier League was coupled with the highest market value. Norwich on the other hand will be bemoaning their inability to return to the top flight.

The Canaries have a current market value of nearly £83m and this puts them second in the Championship table. Unfortunately for them, they only managed a 13th place in the final table and take little comfort from splitting Burnley and the other automatically promoted side Sheffield United.

While another team that was looking to return to the Premier League at the first time of asking were Watford. Like Norwich, their quest to do so can only be labelled as a miserable failure. The fourth-highest value being positioned next to an 11th place finish.

Below them Sunderland and Blackburn slightly punched above their weight, finishing one place higher than their overall market value. But what about play-off winners Luton? 16th in terms of market value but now a part of the Premier League’s promised land for 2023/24. 

Bottom of the Second Tier

As for the bottom of the Championship, two of the three relegated teams on the pitch also have two of the bottom three market values in the division and although Rotherham are only 22nd in terms of current market values, they punched their way to a respectable 19th finish.

This means it was Reading and Wigan who suffered on the field as much as off it. Both outfits have been demoted to League One for 2023/24, Both clubs also suffered points deductions on their way to being consigned to English football’s third tier. 

League One & Two

When it comes to League One, there is more in the way of correlation between market values and eventual league finishes. Five of the top six most valuable clubs filled these berths, the only outlier was Derby who are second in terms of worth but only finished seventh.

While League One champions Plymouth failed to do the double, as they are only fifth when it comes to value. Although with promotion now under their belts, there is every chance that their worth will increase in the next few months.

The other team to join them in terms of automatic promotion were Ipswich and when you consider that they are the most valuable team within the 2022/23 edition of League One, their rise up the ladder can be of no real surprise. 

As for League Two, this arguably offers the most interesting story of all, and it is a story that is steeped in a large amount of displacement.

You have to go all the way down to seventh to find the champions of League Two, as Leyton Orient would get their hands on the silverware at the end of the season. While Northampton’s fourth place market value was slightly bettered by their eventual third in the table.

Of course, four clubs are promoted to League One at the end of each season and although Stockport may have finished fourth in the table and have the second most valuable team in the division, it was not enough to see them move up a level.

The same can be said for Bradford under the stewardship of Mark Hughes. The former Manchester United and Chelsea forward is overseeing the most valuable team in League Two, but a sixth place finish was not good enough in the end.

Doncaster on the other hand will be bemoaning a lack of fortune on the pitch. They may be the third most valuable club in League Two, but they could only manage 18th on the final day. Crewe who are the sixth most valuable were not much better by finishing 13th.

Although it should be noted that the gap between the giants and the minnows in the division is far smaller than the three leagues above and this will go a long way to explaining the lack of correlation between market values and final positions. 

Over and Under Achievers

To conclude our findings, we are going to highlight the teams that truly are over or underachieving when it comes to the comparison of market values and their performances on the pitch.

The first thing you will notice is that there are no Premier League teams that are punching above their weight in terms of market value. The 20 most valuable clubs at the time of writing also ply their trade in the highest level of the game.

While there are two Championship outfits that should have been playing in League One on market values alone. The pair of Reading and Wigan have corrected that issue by suffering relegation and although Ipswich have rightly replaced them, Derby will be wishing this metric was the only one.

However, the picture when looking at both League One and Two is far more disjointed as 10 clubs from the latter would currently find themselves operating a division higher when using market values alone.

If market values were marking out the landscape of the third and fourth tier, as many as seven clubs would be playing at a higher level. Leyton Orient and Northampton are there regardless, the quintet of Bradford, Stockport, Doncaster, Salford, Crewe need to improve on the field of play.

While it does make for good reading if you are a Cheltenham, Accrington, or Morecambe fan or at the very least it is cause for concern. If market values were deciding the League Two entrants, these three clubs would be forced down to the fourth tier. 

Editorial information

This article was researched and fact-checked by Dan Tracey who also then added the words - Dan is a multi-talented writer, data analyst and podcaster whose six-year career in the sports data sphere has seen incredible successes. From helping UEFA create their annual technical reports to writing articles for Sports Betting Websites, including sites like TheLinesUS and Goal

Data courtesy of https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/

All data correct as of 1st August 2023

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