as for england, the tax rates and pound-euro conversion is pushing players away – look at this statement by alonso last week

“Alonso is refusing to commit himself to Liverpool next season, with Real Madrid eager to to take him to the Bernabeu, and with Alonso estimating he is losing a third of his earnings he is edging closer to a return to Spain.

“Of course we footballers think about it; we are not stupid, we keep an eye on it,” Alonso said. “When you see your contract down by 30 per cent you cannot be happy. I cannot do anything – it must be Gordon Brown or David Cameron. ”

not sure Gordon Brown cares that alonso is suffering on his 50K weekly wage but the spanish parliment does –

Jun 23, 2009

MADRID (AFP) — Spain’s ruling Socialist Party on Tuesday withdrew its support for a motion that would have ended the so-called “Beckham law” under which foreign footballers receive tax benefits.

The Socialists had earlier agreed to support a move by the IU-ICV, a coalition of leftist and Green parties, to introduce the measure “to curb the abuse of taxation privileges of elite footballers.”

The law, first conceived to aid foreign business investment, allows foreign footballers playing in Spain to be taxed on only 24 percent of their income, instead of 43 percent for other Spaniards in the same income bracket.

It is popularly know as the “Beckham law”, after English footballing icon David Beckham, who was the first to benefit after his arrival at Real Madrid in 2003.

It’s going to be no surprise at all when they spend big just looking at their projected budgets but I think the hold up is a lot of other clubs realise the amount of money going around this season and want bigger fees.

The best way to get the most money out of a deal is make it very clear you do not want to sell and make the chasers wait. It worked well for both Kaka and Ronaldo and their respective teams which held out on big money deals till they got what they wanted.

You can tell neither of those teams are done spending though. I mean we know Manchester Uniteds budget and its already been confirmed every last penny goes into transfers so they are from done.

Real Madrid have plenty of money though they are trying to get more bang for buck now that they have Kaka and Ronaldo on big money deals.

Manchester City are spending big bucks on strikers but they have yet to prop up their defense and and midfield so their not close to done yet.

Chelsea on the other hand have a huge rumoured budget they haven’t really touched either.

Whatever happens to the rest of the market given the sheer money the above four have to spend on transfers and the amount of buying they could do to improve their squad its likely there will be some huge transfers this season.

Manchester Uniteds 125 million pound budget alone could buy them quite a lot of football. I mean a guy like Arguero or Benzema would cost around 30 million. They could buy both of them and still have more than half of the budget left.

Even if United bought Benzema for his projected “high” price added to the buying of Valencia theyve still got a metric ton of money in the order of 70 to 80 million left. Can you just imagine the type of players you can buy for 20 to 30 million let alone that much?!

Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea all have gigantic budgets I really can’t even wait to see what they do next year because they are anything but done.