Florence shoots the bird
©IMAGO
After four months in office, VfL Wolfsburg has parted ways with coach Paul Simonis. Four months in which the Dutchman failed to lead the Wolves into the league table regions appropriate for their status. In this respect, Lower Saxony is one of the eight worst performing teams in the top 5 leagues in Europe. Some others have also already pulled the ripcord on the coaching position.
Based on the squad value, Wolfsburg shouldn’t be 14th in the Bundesliga table. After ten games under Simonis they are just one point ahead of the relegation zone and three points ahead of the direct relegation zone. However, VfL’s squad value is currently just under 252 million euros. Only six teams in the German upper house are rated higher. This results in a discrepancy of seven places compared to the actual table ranking. Highest value in the German upper house (for statistics: squad value vs. league rank in the Bundesliga).
In all of Europe’s top leagues, only seven teams outperform Wolves – in a negative sense. Atalanta Bergamo in Italy, Real Sociedad in Spain and Newcastle United with ex-Stuttgart player Nick Woltemade in England are eight places worse than their squad value would suggest. The LaLiga clubs FC Valencia and FC Girona have nine places. Nottingham Forest remain eleven places behind the market value comparison in the Premier League. The reluctant leader is AC Fiorentina, whose disastrous start to the Serie A season even caused a difference of 13 places in the table. All of these leagues each have two more teams than the Bundesliga.
“In football, results and points count in the end. And the development in the last few weeks hasn’t gone as we all hoped,” said Wolfsburg’s sports director Peter Christiansen on Sunday about the separation from Simonis. The previous Friday in Bremen, VfL suffered its sixth defeat in the last seven league games (plus the cup exit against Kiel). The weak start to the season has already been partly factored into the current squad value for Lower Saxony. The valuation with which they started the season, including all new additions, was 14 million euros higher.
Cologne is the counterpart to the Wolfsburg discrepancy
If you look for the best-performing teams in Europe’s top leagues compared to their squad value, you end up in England. In the Bundesliga, 1. FC Cologne is the counterpart to Wolfsburg and exceeds its squad value by a full seven places in the table. In the Premier League, promoted AFC Sunderland with former Leverkusen player Granit Xhaka is even fourth in the strongest league in the world, although they are third from bottom in the squad value ranking. Here, too, there was already a significant adjustment from 290 million to 340 million euros in the market value updates of the major leagues in October. It was the highest percentage gain in market value of any team in the Premier League this season (to Premier League squad value developments).
In the Bundesliga, Wolfsburg is in second-to-last place in terms of squad value development so far this season. Only the Wolves’ last opponent recorded a larger loss compared to the start of the season including all new additions, which ultimately cost Simonis his job; the SV Werder. However, since the last market value update of the Bundesliga clubs in October, the Bremen team have caught up in terms of sport, have not lost any of the last five games and are therefore ten places better than VfL in the form table.
Among the biggest crisis clubs, some were quicker than Wolves to decide to change their coach. At Nottingham (Ange Postecoglou) and Florence (Stefano Pioli), for example, unsuccessful coaches from ambitious clubs had to leave. Now Simonis followed. The statistics of the largest discrepancy between squad value and league ranking could also serve as an indicator of impending separations.