I published this on Reddit after details of Kante transfer was published for KAP on February 24, 2026

So, Kante deal got announced and honestly my head is on Mars. I know I am not alone and there are going to be a couple (I hope more) people that will be pretty pissed at this deal. Let me preface this by saying I am not angry at Kante for the wages or sign-on fee and eager to see him play.

Basic guiding principle here is quite simple. People we elect to manage the club are the stewards. They bear the responsibility to protect best short and long-term interests of the club. Players do not carry any part of this responsibility. This falls strictly on management and board. No transfer fee or salary is a stick to beat the players with. Transfer fees and wages are always a management/board problem, never a player issue. Only thing players should be judged on should be how they perform on the pitch and how professional they are in their off-the-pitch work.

Now with that being said, this is a ridiculous deal to put on the table. I’ve seen a couple “accountant fans” and I’ve seen probably more people who do not agree with this line of thinking. However, I think you are wrong. I won’t tell you how to fan (and no one should) but I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding when people oppose this line of thinking. Usual counterarguments go like “it’s not my money”, “how do you know the details of club’s financial position”. On surface level, both valid arguments are not your money, and we do not have an intimate knowledge of club’s financial status (unless you work in this area). That being said, this is not our money, but this is our team. If I am not mistaken, we want it to be successful and better.

This is where we have the misunderstanding, “accountant fans” also want this team to be successful, some of us just think that by going on a spending spree and making investments that do not carry a return you are harming club’s long-term prospects.

In 2.5 years, we will pay Kante a total of 42.5 million euros. You have to have a return on your transfers, sure you can spend everything you have for a year and maybe become champions for a year and be miserable for ten years, then go nuts. If we want to be successful over a 10-year period, you have to consider what your return is. Now there is another misunderstanding, when we say return on investment, it does not have to be a financial return. Not every player you buy is that. It is perfectly fine to invest in certain players while expecting a financial loss but a sporting gain. Sometimes it makes sense to do a culture reset and that is expensive.

As this board is still new and their main focus is to bring success, I am more than willing to be generous in my evaluation and give them the benefit of doubt. They inherited a squad that lacked certain things, one thing it did not lack was the know-how to win. We have Ederson, Skriniar, Asensio and to a lesser extent Talisca and Kerem. Building on top of this makes sense to a certain extent. I also accept that they face immense pressure and it is hard to make cold, calculated decisions in the position club finds itself in (some of it self-inflicted).

With all this being said we can’t continue to spend money like this because we do not have the money. For 24/25 season winner’s prize was approximately €15.8 million. For the 2026/27 Champions League season, UEFA will distribute approximately €2.49 billion in total prize money to the 36 participating clubs. Each club is guaranteed a base participation fee of roughly €18.6 million for qualifying for the league phase, alongside performance bonuses of €2.1 million per win. So best case scenario, when we are champions, win all 8games in Champions League (which we won’t) prize money from both competitions would be close to € 50,000,000. It is quite clear that prize money is not the solution as that will roughly equate to wages of Skriniar, Asensio, Ederson, Kante in gross payments, per Capology.

That clearly underlines one thing, at a certain point you have to consider not making sporting sense but also financial sense. Because without making financial sense you will not have sustainable sporting success. Yes, you are not paying for it, but it is our club. If we were to demand sustainable and reasonable management practices with quarter of the fervency we demand Kanta transfer, we can have a much more successful club that competes with the means it has. We do not need world stars for every position, we need good players and good players do not cost as much as a 35-year-old Kante.