What is it with people and Milner?
It seems that, once again, my opinion on a player is completely at odds with most of the forum.
Personally, I think that 'worth' is such a stupid platitude that journalists, and now fans, use to justify their own opinion on a player.
A player is 'worth' whatever somebody pays for them. In fact, in a market where prices are decided by two parties, and the goods exchanged are in themselves variable, the only possible way to determine worth is by looking at the price.
There are several reasons why Milner is worth £100m and several reasons why he is worth £10k. Firstly, Villa have an asset on their books that brings three major benefits to them; merchandising, sponsorship, and finally, playing ability. The only people in the world who know how much Milner is worth, is Randy Lerner and his accountants. Not Bluemoon posters, not O'Neill, not Martin fucking Samuel, just Lerner himself. He knows what he brings into the club in both terms of attracting sponsors and prestige, and also knows what he brings to the team after advice from the man who he appointed to run that side of his business, O'Neill.
He has obviously been given the advice that he is a very important member of the squad and is therefore almost irreplaceable. After consulting with his accounts, and taking this into consideration, he has decided that he will ask for a £30m fee.
Now, that is his value by Villa. His worth is decided whether City believe that he is equal in value to £30m sitting in their account. As we have (as a complete guess), £300m sitting in our coffers, is James Milner equal to the value of 10% of our liquid assets? I would personally say so. He is a relatively young player, who can play in numerous positions (to varying successes), he is English which will possibly be important for future rules, he knows the league, he is currently in the England team which is big attractions to both current and potential sponsors , he seems quite a likeable guy in interviews (again, helps with sponsors, but also with the image of the club), he has been playing in the Prem since he was 15 (marketing hook), etc, etc.
If we had £50m sitting in our coffers, would he be worth 60% of our liquid assets? I don't think so. Messi would be, due to his large worldwide profile, his huge marketing and sponsorship machine, his respectful demeanour, his internationally recognised quality and his great prestige. He'd be worth anywhere up to about 75% of our liquid assets to me, so in Milner terms, I'd pay up to about £225m for him. Cook might see him as worth 50%, or 26.667254832% or whatever, which is how we determine what price to bid.
This is how worth works. It's a scale. This is why clubs like Wigan have a good business model. They buy in players that take up 25% of their budget, them sell them to Spurs for 25% of THEIR budget. Both parties have now felt that they have a good deal.
You can't look at worth as a monetary figure like that. Johnson cost us £8m, Ronaldo cost £80m. Does that make Ronaldo TEN TIMES the player of Johnson? No, of course not. Think about that, as it is an overused saying - ten times the player. Is he TEN TIMES better than him? I wouldn't think so. I wouldn't think Ronaldo is TEN times better than me, and I'm shit.
We need to stop with this stupid shit about comparing transfer values of players, it doesn't work and makes people look like an idiot.
