Pepe will pan out eventually. Philippe Auclair said his transfer fee was complicated, so I am hoping that our wretched form is putting a massive dent in that price.
All this player financing risk does make wonder why clubs don't get together, buy players and register them on their teams and then create a security against all the players registered in a single summer, and sell that debt to the market. Football is growing quite rapidly, so the clubs should be good to repay and by pooling the players you reduce the individual club risk. There will still be some system risk (e.g., Covid - but that's something that would affect all assets). They'd probably be able to raise cheaper debt for the league or a class of club (e.g., the G-14)
