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If you're the sort to put a lot of faith in the CIES Football Observatory's player valuations, no clubs had a worse summer of business when it came to value in the market than Liverpool. That's because by their player value model, the Reds bought one of the summer's most overvalued players and sold the most undervalued player.
In their most recent report, the CIES rated Raheem Sterling at more than £70M, which is more than £20M above what Liverpool sold him for. Take into account the roughly £5M reportedly due only if Manchester City win the Champions League and the portion of the fee headed to QPR, and Liverpool got far, far less for the sale of Sterling than the CIES think he's worth.
On the other side of the ledger, their numbers suggest that Christian Benteke is only worth roughly £20M, meaning Liverpool overpaid by around £12-13M for the Belgian striker. Benteke is in fact the third most over-valued transfer of last summer based on their calculations, behind only City purchase Kevin de Bruyne and Manchester United's new striker Anthony Martial.
Sterling, though, is by far the most under-valued sale. In fact, he's the only player the CIES think was sold for more than £10M less than his true market value. Sterling tops that side of the list as a £23M value deficit for Liverpool while Lyon signing Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa and new Fenerbahce striker Robin van Persie are next and listed as being undervalued by around £8.5M.
It's not all bad new for Liverpool, though, as Nathaniel Clyne comes in fifth on the undervalued list, with the CIES believing the Reds paid around £7M less than the fullback was worth even taking into account that his contract was running down. No other players Liverpool bought or sold made the top twenty over or undervalued lists this time around.
