Jamie Vardy's £1million transfer from Fleetwood Town to Leicester City in May 2012 is the greatest value-for-money signing in Premier League history, according to Daily Mail columnist Ian Ladyman, who rated the move above Eric Cantona's switch to Manchester United and Vincent Kompany's arrival at Manchester City.
Ladyman acknowledged a technicality in the argument: Leicester were not in the Premier League when they signed Vardy, and would not be promoted from the Championship for another two years. But he said that did not diminish the impact of a deal that helped rewrite the history of the club and the city of Leicester.
Vardy went on to score 24 goals as Leicester won the Premier League title in 2016 under manager Claudio Ranieri, a triumph Ladyman described as the greatest story the competition has ever produced. He said Vardy was not only Leicester's top scorer that season but the focal point of the team's counter-attacking style, worrying opponents and shaping how rivals tried to set up against Ranieri's side.
Leicester's wider recruitment that era also stood out. Riyad Mahrez cost the club £400,000 and was later sold for £60million, while N'Golo Kante was signed for £5.5million.
The case for Eric Cantona
Ladyman set out the rival case for Cantona, whose £1.2million move from Leeds United to Manchester United in November 1992 has long been regarded as one of the most audacious pieces of business in the modern English game. There was no transfer window at the start of the Premier League era.
The deal came about after Leeds chairman Bill Fotherby phoned his Old Trafford counterpart Martin Edwards to make an unsuccessful enquiry about United left-back Dennis Irwin, a conversation that ended with Leeds, the reigning league champions, selling Cantona to their fiercest rivals.
United won the title that season, ending a 26-year wait, and lifted three more in the following four years before Cantona retired in 1997. Ladyman said manager Sir Alex Ferguson and United's players of the time still credit Cantona with providing the missing ingredient after losing out to Leeds the previous season, but argued United would likely have won a title regardless, given the quality of the squad Ferguson had built.
Ladyman also noted that Cantona left two years before United won their first Champions League of the modern era, and that his fee exceeded £1million at a time when the British transfer record stood at £3.6million, paid by Blackburn Rovers for Alan Shearer from Southampton the previous summer. United's own record fee at the time was £1.5million.
Other shrewd Premier League deals
Ladyman pointed to further examples of smart business across the Premier League's 34-year history, contrasting them with the summer transfer window that closed on September 1, which he said was conducted with little of the precision of past dealings.
Liverpool paid Inter Milan a modest £8.5million for Philippe Coutinho in 2012 before selling him to Barcelona for around £142million in 2018, using the proceeds to help build a squad that went on to win the Champions League. Andy Robertson, part of that Liverpool squad, cost the club just £8million, compared with the £40million Liverpool paid for his eventual successor, Milos Kerkez.
Elsewhere, Manchester City paid Hamburg £6million for Vincent Kompany in 2008, Arsenal signed Nicolas Anelka from Paris Saint-Germain for £500,000 in 1997 and Patrick Vieira from AC Milan for £3.5million a year earlier, while Cesar Azpilicueta moved from Marseille to Chelsea in 2012. Ladyman said that quintet of players won 35 trophies between them at those clubs.
Vardy's legacy
Vardy, by contrast, won only two major honours at Leicester, the 2016 Premier League title and the FA Cup five years later, but Ladyman said he did so while helping change the cultural reference points of an entire city. Ladyman noted that Vardy had reportedly said he did not fancy the move when Leicester first offered him the transfer from Fleetwood more than 14 years ago.
In his top five list of the best deals in Premier League history, Ladyman ranked Vardy first, followed by Cantona, Coutinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who joined Manchester United from Molde for £1.5million in 1996, and Seamus Coleman, who moved from Sligo Rovers to Everton for £60,000 in 2009 and went on to make 433 appearances for the club over 17 years.
