ESPN rank two Newcastle United stars among top 10 worst signings of this Premier League season - Baffling
Newcastle United feature in all three of ESPN's top three worst transfers of the summer, which, while we can accept two of them, the third is truly astonishing.
If this was entirely a subjective list based off of one man's opinion, and that man was a Sunderland fan, they maybe, just maybe we'd have let this one slide.
However, ESPN journalist Ryan O'Hanlon, who loves making up these lists based on arbitrary rules he creates, has had a stinker this time.
We're not digging out O'Hanlon here because we genuinely like this type of content, but when you see who is holding on to the number three spot here, you'll see why we're bringing it up.
What is Nick Woltemade doing on the list of 10 worst transfers at all?
Sitting at the top of the list for worst transfer of the summer is, rather unsurprisingly, Alexander Isak. His £125 million move from Newcastle to Liverpool has borne so little fruit that it's genuinely hilarious to us bitter and twisted Geordies.
Number two is Yoane Wissa. Having forked out £55 million for our new striker, the man has yet to make his debut, having spent the entirety of his Newcastle United career so far in the treatment room. That's a fair placement.
However, number three is our £69 million striker, Nick Woltemade. The man who has four goals in eight Premier League games, has, apart from the last couple of games, looked like an absolute bargain, is somehow higher on ESPN's list that Florian Wirtz. What's going on here?
Ryan O'Hanlon was so concerned about where he could, he didn't stop to think about whether he should
It turns out that what O'Hanlon has devised to create his list is by measuring a player's fee and then looking at how much time they've spent away from the pitch. Here are his own words to explain better:
"Almost by definition, the worst deals among these 203 moves for €10 million or more are going to be some of the most expensive ones. And if we look at "value left on the bench" -- a player's transfer fee, multiplied by the percentage of minutes he hasn't played this far -- then it's going to skew heavily toward the biggest deals.
"If a team paid €10 million to sign a player, then €10 million is the max that can be left on the bench. If a team paid €100 million, then, well, yeah, you see where I'm going. By this crude metric, here are the 10 worst deals among the Big Five leagues so far:"
While O'Hanlon admits it's a crude metric, the glaring flaws in the calculation make it completely useless. Much of Woltemade's 'value left on the bench' is from the fact that he wasn't here for the first few games of the season, so he wasn't on the bench; he was playing in Germany. You could argue the same about Isak, but if he hadn't moved to Liverpool, he still wouldn't have played because he hadn't trained.
The ranking doesn't take into account anything that the players have actually done on the field either, otherwise, Woltemade wouldn't feature at all and Florian Wirtz would be way higher than ninth.
Still, thanks for the free content, Ryan.
