“While the price of a Premier League footballer does indeed get further and further away from the financial realities of the average fan, it’s not necessarily ‘insane’, as it still only rises at a fairly predictable rate of inflation. Based on our Transfer Price Index model, Graeme Riley and I could have told you at the start of the summer that the going rate (if there is such a thing) for an elite but not ‘top three in world’ player – at a good age – was £90m.” Tomkins Times