Never mind the bankers...

While we were all getting worked up about the size of bankers' bonuses and whether or not these represented the payment of obscene amounts of money, we seem to have been taking our eye off the ball...(pun intended)

Monday last week marked the closure of the football transfer window, and some of the sums of money changing hands made bankers' bonuses look like petty cash!

Last year, Chelsea reported a loss of around £70 million, and yet they were able to pay £50 million to 'buy' Fernando Torres from Liverpool and £20 million for Benfica's David Luiz.

This was of course payrolled by Roman Abramovitz whose estimated fortune is around $11,200,000,000 which is a lot of wonga in any currency. I worked out that at the UK's paultry interest rates, that could earn him around £100 million a year in a building society! So let's face it, £70 million is nothing to him!

But does this make it right?

My regular reader will know that I am not a football fan. In fact, I consider it to be a boring game which is just a surrogate for tribal warfare. Nevertheless, even if I was the greatest fan in the world I would have to question whether you could ever justify paying £50 million plus an huge salary just to employ a bloke to kick a ball around a field. On that basis, what's a consultant surgeon worth?

This week, the European FA issued a statement saying that it was considering barring any club who posted a loss three years in a row from playing in the Champion's League. On that basis, Chelsea would be ineligible. Almost immediately on this being pointed out, they modified the statement to 'any club which was insolvent' which would let Chelsea back in because of it's sugar daddy owner.

And who says money doesn't talk.

But the most obscene thing about all this is that these ridiculous transfer figures can only result in one thing : higher ticket prices. So at the end of the day, it's the ordinary fan who loses out...