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What could Brighton and Hove Albion buy for the price
of Neymar?
Football
has officially gone mad. Paris Saint-Germain are all set
to not just break, but completely obliterate the world
transfer record by paying £198m to Barcelona to sign
Brazilian forward Neymar.
The fee
isn't the only mind boggling thing - Neymar will earn
over a million pounds every fortnight. And that is his
wage without tax.
You've probably
all seen the comparisons. That, God forbid, you could get
thousands of Theresa May's for the same price or that you
could buy five Jordan Pickfords.
Well we've
crunched the figures and come up with this little list of
what Brighton and Hove Albion could buy for one Neymar...
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Maty Ryan x 38
Brighton
and Hove Albion's record signing currently
stands at £5.2m, paid earlier in the summer to
Valencia for the transfer of Australian number
one goalkeeper Maty Ryan (you would of course
hope that we will break that again before the
season starts). For £198m, we could've signed 38
Ryan's from Barcelona's fellow Spanish side.
While this may some ludicrous on the surface,
given that it is Manchester City at home up
first for the Albion and their treasure trove of
forwards, if we were legally able to play 38
goalkeepers in a game it would actually be a
very shrewd move. |
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Gary Hart x 198,000 (plus some kit)
At the
other end of the scale from the Maty Ryan
transfer fee comes Gary Hart. Largely considered
to be the biggest bargain in the Albion's
history, he was signed by Brian Horton for the
grand total of £1,000 plus a set of kit from
Stansted in the summer of 1998. He went onto
play 373 times in 13 years with the Albion as a
striker, right winger, right back and left back.
He was picked by 10 different managers across
three divisions and netted 45 times to become
one of the most popualr players in the clubs
history. £198m (plus some kit) would secure you
198,000 Gary Hart's.
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Amex Stadium x 2
When the
Amex Stadium opened in 2011, it was said to have
cost Brighton chairman Tony Bloom £98m. Since
then it has obviously been expanded with another
7,000 added to the capacity, not to mention the
works undertaken this summer to make it 'Premier
League Ready'. But working off that rough
initial figure, for one Neymar you could
effectively build two Amex Stadiums. He may be a
good footballer, will he transform PSG and give
their supporters as much joy as our much vaunted
stadium has? Of course he bloody won't. |
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Category A match ticket x 330,000
Plenty has been
made of the Albion's decision to start charging
£60 for a single match day ticket against
Category A opposition in the Premier League. It
has priced out families and those on low income
from supporting their team in the biggest games
against the biggest clubs. If you have the sort
of money that Neymar has cost however, you could
watch Brighton play 330,000 Category A games. To
some this would probably sound like heaven but
when you factor in that for every five years we
are good, there is normally another five of
utter tripe it sounds like a terrible way to
spend your money. |
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Entry to Seven Stars Bar x 1,650,000
This is one that
will probably give Paul Barber an erection.
Profit Paul infamously decided last summer to
start charging supporters for the pleasure of
using the Seven Stars Supporters Bar located in
the East Stand of the Amex. You could either pay
£250 for a season ticket to get into it for
every league game in a season, or fork out £12
on the door. For the money Neymar costs, you
would be able to enjoy glamour such as a pool
table, a fussball table, pints served in glasses
and a complimentary programme a grand total of
1,650,000 times. |
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Amex Stadium pie x 4,125,000
Who ate all the pies? Quite conceivably, it
could be you. For £198,000,000, you would be
able to eat a quite staggering 4,125,000 pies
based on their 2016-17 season costing, which
would leave you looking very, very fat. That is
of course presuming you are able to get one as
sometimes it seems beyond the club to supply
enough for 30,000 people. You would also hope
that with that sort of investment floating
around in pastry based items, the little blue
boxes the club made such a song and dance about
in the first season would also return. |
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