Giving football a helping hand, not killing it.

With silly season well underway in light of Madrid's £80m bid for the creosoted ladyboy it appears we won't be the only club propping up the English transfer market this summer. What those who think us splashing 'obscene' amounts of cash around is bad for the game seem to forget is that there is a drip-down effect every time the oilmen get their chequebook out and finance a domestic transfer.

Since taking over at City, Mr Mansour & ADUG have backed Mark Hughes to the tune of around £85m, a figure that's drawn some criticism yet one which is put into perspective by today's developments over at Legoland. Just shy of half of this has gone to fellow Premier League clubs, £10m to Chelsea for Wayne Bridge, a similar figure to West Ham for Craig Bellamy, the recent £12m paid to Villa for allowing us to relieve them of England regular Gareth Barry, and the payment to Newcastle for Shay Given, thought to be somewhere between £5m & £8m.

It's probably too early to identify cases of these particular clubs using money from players sales to invest in new domestic talent, seeing as two of the clubs involved are in severe financial difficulties; West Ham now basically being in the hands of a consortium of Icelandic receivers, and Newcastle relegated, plus the fact we've only had days of one January transfer window. With the ink probably still wet on the Gareth Barry deal time will probably tell, but i assume Martin O'Neill will spend some, even most of that on British-based replacements. And of course, Chelsea's first major signings since cashing in on Bridge are rumoured to be, amongst others, Glen Johnson & Danny Sturridge.

What we can do, however, is look back on a similar case from the past, Chelsea's initial transfer offensive in the early days of Abramovich. Of the £121m they spent in the first season around half went to English clubs. This included £17m to Blackburn for Damien Duff (who in turn shelled out £11.5m to British clubs to strengthen their squad, including £2.5m to Millwall for Steven Reid and £1.25m to Huddersfield for Jon Stead), £7m to Southampton for Wayne Bridge (who paid Sunderland £3.25m for Kevin Phillips, Brentford £500k for Paul Smith & Villa £2m for Peter Crouch) & £10m to Charlton for Scott Parker (who went onto invest half that amount in players from Liverpool and Arsenal within the year). These selling clubs went on to make cash signings from a number of clubs, from Oxford Utd to Mansfield to Hucknall Town.

Obviously there's nothing to suggest that any of these signings wouldn't have been made anyhow, but the coffers of the clubs involved were certainly topped up. There are indeed plenty of cases of clubs not reinvesting hefty amounts of player income back into the market, but the money could and in lots of instances probably did enable the clubs to improve their financial position. West Ham for example, whose squad was pillaged in light of their relegation, brought in around £12.6m from Chelsea for Glen Johnson and Joe Cole. Charlton and Southampton were clubs who'd later be in severe difficulties, and even ourselves, lets not forget that when we were offered £21m from Chelsea for Shaun Wright-Phillips, as sad as we were to see him go, we had quite serious concerns about future investment in the club and mounting debts, less than half of that money being spent on replacements but up to £10m going to service loans from John Wardle & David Makin, if i recall correctly.

I guess my point, admittedly made in a slightly arse-about-tit manner, is that for football to work there has to be a food-chain. Lower-league clubs need to shift the odd player up the ladder to have a chance, and Premier League clubs making big domestic signings, even at times overspending, and though the figures involved might be beyond what us lemmings can even fathom, should be seen as a positive. If the likes of us don't invest in top domestic talent, and especially with lots of clubs, even at Premier League level, tightening the purse-strings somewhat, then the mid-lower Premier League clubs are less likely to bring in players from the Championship, who in turn have little disposable income, etc, etc.