Originally Posted by Ludas

Modric is Europe's most overrated player. In Real he would warm the bench for Khedira and Xabi Alonso. Can't believe anyone would pay more than €25m.

Originally Posted by The Sunday Times

This is no time to have mileage on the clock, no country for old men. Football is not necessarily a young man’s game but the transfer market is. Chelsea, having bought Eden Hazard and Marko Marin this summer, were recruiting again last week, completing the spectacular acquisition of a £25m Brazilian starlet, Oscar.

Next they want Victor Moses and are close to meeting Wigan’s £10m valuation. Oscar, Marin, Hazard and Moses — should he join — would look like a boy band in the club photos but are earmarked for a serious function. And so they should be, for £74m combined. Aged 21, 20, 23 and 21, this callow quartet are the key to Chelsea’s renewal.

The plan is that, joining Juan Mata, 24, they will spearhead a Chelsea of the future as Roman Abramovich gets ever more hooked on flair-rich, Latin and Spanish-flavoured football in his quest to build Barça at the Bridge. If only he could go back and buy Fernando Torres as he was at 23, instead of the current version.

Chelsea are undergoing a generational change. The fresh forwards (with Romelu Lukaku, 19, and Kevin de Bruyne, 21, in reserve) are expected to replace the grizzled old guard of Florent Malouda, Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka and Salomon Kalou. Similar changes are happening in other areas. At right-back, Abramovich wants Marseilles’ £9m Spaniard, Cesar Azpilicueta, 22, after authorising the release of 29-year-old Jose Bosingwa.

Hazard, Mata and Oscar could become Chelsea’s signature — three tyro No 10s in creative concert feeding balls through to one another or to Torres. Facing Egypt for Brazil’s Olympic side, Oscar excelled. Going by brief sightings, his poise and vision seem prodigious. He was the stand-out when Brazil won last year’s Under-20 World Cup.

Oscar has Kaka’s physique and could become Kaka II. Yet, like all emerging players, there is a chance potential might go unfulfilled. So why didn’t Chelsea just sign Kaka I? After all, Kaka is available and — AC Milan have offered just £10m — could be prised from Real Madrid for far less than £25m.

The reason is the same as Manchester United’s this summer in signing Shinji Kagawa, 23, and Nick Powell, 18. And why Liverpool bought Fabio Borini, 21; why Tottenham recruited Jan Vertonghen, 25, and Gylfi Sigurdsson, 22. It is also why United can’t get more than £5m for Dimitar Berbatov.

Despite Berbatov’s two Premier League titles, 48 international goals and genius streak, he, like Kaka, is in his 30s. Well into his career, he has reached a certain wage level. He will have little resale value, if any, at the end of his next contract. Salary and resale potential explain the mania for youth.

Berbatov earns £110,000 a week. Any club giving him the three-year-deal he wants at 31 will commit about £17m in wages on top of any transfer fee. Kaka, 30, is said to earn £7m net. At British tax rates, even if image rights were used to offset liability, a Premier League club would have to budget on £50m in pay to get Kaka on a four-year deal. His true cost is thus close to £70m whereas Oscar, bundling up fee and wages, is probably £25m cheaper. And Oscar, on a five-year deal,should have high transfer value at the end of his Chelsea stint.

Sao Paulo claim United have offered £26m for Lucas Moura. It seems a lot for a 19-year-old not in Brazil’s Olympic starting XI but United made the world record profit on any player by acquiring Cristiano Ronaldo for £12.24m at 18 and selling him for £80m when he was 24. Ronaldo’s initial wages at United were less than £20,000 a week.

The wages-plus-resale equation is even more important with Uefa’s financial fair play regulations in force from 2014-15. The measures are a nightmare for Manchester City with regard to Emmanuel Adebayor. So keen are City to sell that they are offering to subsidise his pay so he can remain on the same £175,000 a week he currently earns during the first two years of a proposed four-year contract at Tottenham.

Adebayor, though, wants more money from Spurs over the final two years of the deal. Given he is 28 and will have little resale value, City want just £5m for him but even price-cutting can’t close the deal. City’s manager, Roberto Mancini is angry efforts to sign Arsenal striker Robin van Persie are not more strenuous but Brian Marwood, football director, won’t buy while Adebayor, Edin Dzeko and Roque Santa Cruz are on the books.

It’s not only the biggest English clubs who now focus on young signings. Aston Villa, Wigan, Swansea, Newcastle, Norwich, Southampton and West Brom prefer the youthful end of the market. An audit of all Premier League signings over the past two summers reveals the shift. Since the current window opened, £143m has been spent on players 25 or younger, 88% of the total outlay. That’s a startling increase on last summer, when 63% of an overall £456.3m transfer outlay was on players in that bracket.

Economics apart, younger players are attractive when managers are rebuilding teams because they can be moulded. One irony is that fees for senior players have diminished when veterans are playing longer. AC Milan gave Andrea Pirlo to Juventus for nothing in 2011. A victorious Serie A campaign, then Euro 2012, demonstrated he was not exactly past it.

Even with wages included, there are bargains in the “older player” market: QPR getting Park Ji-Sung for £2m stands out. You can overpay for potential, as Liverpool are finding as they face a £15m-plus loss on Andy Carroll, but overpaying for a senior player is even worse. Stewart Downing, the most recent £20m signing of a Premier League player aged over 25, is said to have a four-year-contract worth £70,000 a week. That £34.5m is quite a package for an attacker with limited resale value and who, last season, managed no goals and whose only assist, said some critics, was in helping Kenny Dalglish get the sack.