Thanks for the response TT.
I think maybe the reason we seem to be disagreeing is because we are taking different factors into account.
Your first point about Neto, he was a relative unknown at the time we signed him. You can't say the same about Fabio. Google Fabio's name and there are articles from before we signed him about how he's breaking records in Portuguese youth football. One coach comparing him to Ronaldo when he was 15. Fabio scored 33 goals in 39 games playing for Porto's under 19's, when he was 16.
I'll give you Neto and Fabio had comparable first team experience when we signed them (very little), but their youth careers are worlds apart. Obviously when signing very young players, their youth careers are really the only thing you can go on.
So the idea we could have got Fabio for anywhere near 16m is fanciful IMO, it just wouldn't have happened. So if we couldn't have got him for anywhere 16m, should we have paid 35? This is where it seems the other factors come into play for you, i.e., our overall budget, the relative size of our club and the state of our playing squad.
This is where I actually agree with you, is it wise for Wolves at stage they are at, to be gambling 35m on potential when there are other areas of the team that need improving, or even other strikers that we could get for similar money that would have an instant impact? I would say no. So if that's the way you are defining whether we overpaid, we agree.
Presumably if a massive club had paid what we had, you wouldn't necessarily view that as an overpayment?
As PuntsWolf mentioned inflation, I looked up how much transfers have gone up over the years. There's a good website that tells you how much players would have cost in today's money taking into account transfer fee inflation (obvs that has far outpaced normal inflation)
Ronaldo cost Man U £17m in 2003, today that would have been £71m. Double what we paid for Fabio. Bearing in mind, Ronaldo had hardly played senior football at that time, just broke alot of records in youth football, just like Fabio. Fabio also had a better goals per minutes ratio in senior football at the same age as Ronaldo. People forget but Ronaldo wasn't that good for the first few years at Utd. People will say yes but it was obvious something was there, fair enough, but if he'd had stayed at that level, you'd have to had said that Utd had overpaid.
So basically we have paid half of what Utd paid for Ronaldo (taking into account transfer fee inflation), who had a nearly identical record to Fabio at the same age. If Fabio turns out to be half the player Ronaldo has been, I don't believe 35m was overpriced.
