Last week, we brought you a breakdown of the most popular players to switch Clubs for the coming season, with a particular focus on the clubs who are buying up that Premier League talent.
Southampton are grabbing all the headlines for being this season’s selling club, but do the stats actually back that up? To see which clubs are actually auctioning off the family silver, we looked at which clubs are selling the most players and used the Beat Your Manager! Fantasy Football data to determine how popular those players were with their fans.
Beat Your Manager! Fantasy Football is a game which is similar to “Football Manager”, but applied to live football, where you manage your favourite Club and pick lineups, bench, formations and substitutions, all in real-time. When fans play the game, the Beat Your Manager team can measure the popularity of different players, by looking at how frequently they are selected for the lineup.
So far, 78 players have been released, with 104 players transferred (sold, on loan) to a total of 71 clubs. Of those 104, 33 did not appear for their respective Clubs last season and so didn’t register a Beat Your Manager! rating, leaving us with 71 players for which popularity data is available.
Crystal Palace went on a spending spree last Autumn; now they lead the race in shedding players
Following Palace’s promotion to the Premier League last summer, manager Ian Holloway went on a buying spree that saw the club’s squad increase to the largest in the league. Having survived relegation, new manager Tony Pulis is instituting a slimmer regimen, with a total of 10 players offloaded to other clubs. The most popular of these players was Jose Campana, who obtained a very respectable first-half season performance rating of 65 per cent from Crystal Palace fans, before being loaned out to German outfit Nuremberg and completing a permanent move to Sampdoria this summer. Dean Moxey and Kagisho Dikgacoi (both 43 per cent) were the next most popular players out the door, but the average Selhurst regular is unlikely to be troubled too much by the number of departures. The average popularity of the released players is 20 per cent, indicating that Pulis is shifting the deadwood.
Chelsea and Sunderland are joint second in the selling stakes, both with six less starters this season compared to last.
Of the two, Chelsea have lost more high-profile players, with the moves of popular players like Frank Lampard (82 per cent) to Manchester City, Ashley Cole (65 per cent) to Roma and David Luiz (63 per cent) to Paris Saint-Germain dominating this summer’s transfer headlines. Demba Ba’s move to Besiktas is unlikely to surprise anyone, as the Senegalese failed to convince the Chelsea faithful after his move from Newcastle, winning just 21 per cent of their confidence.
While Sunderland’s transfers haven’t been as high profile, they also do not have the cash to bank on bringing in new stars and the loss of Jack Colback to Newcastle United and Phil Bardsley to Stoke City will cause some concern among the 39 and 33 per cent (respectively) of Black Cats fans who regularly picked them for their lineups.
Southampton leads the stakes in selling off their popular players
Despite only selling three players this summer, the stature of those players has meant that Southampton has justly earned the moniker of this season’s “selling club”. The sales of club favourite Rickie Lambert (96 per cent) and Adam Lallana (71 per cent) to Liverpool and Luke Shaw to Manchester United (66 per cent) have left many wondering if the club will still be in the Premier League by the end of the season. With the average popularity of players leaving St. Mary’s running at 78 per cent, it’s hard to see who will replace those performances in the coming year.
Norwich City only sold one player so far this summer, but Robert Snodgrass’ popularity average of 65 per cent with Canaries fans puts the club second in the selling league stakes.
Norwich’s relegation-partner Fulham is just behind, with the sale of Steve Sidwell to Stoke City (69 per cent) and the less-fancied Kieran Richardson to Aston Villa (45 per cent) taking the club to third in our league table for selling popular players.
With Palace its quantity, for Southampton feel the quality, but Manchester United like a bit of both
So, Palace leads the stakes for the numbers of players leaving (10), but Southampton are choosy in offloading only their most popular players (78 per cent popularity on average). However, if it is a little of both you are after, Manchester United should fit the bill. Following a harrowing season last year, Louis van Gaal is wielding the new broom at Manchester United and sweeping all before him. The club has offloaded five players this summer, putting them fourth in our list of numbers of players sold.
The club is also fourth when the average popularity of players sold is measured, with the transfers of Patrice Evra (to Juventus; 90 per cent popularity), Nemanja Vidic (to Inter Milan; 79 per cent popularity) and Rio Ferdinand (to Queens Park Rangers; 59 per cent popularity) unlikely to be popular with fans.
Biggest-selling Premier League clubs (by number of Players):
