Cole Palmer fourth behind Arteta’s ‘number one target’ in top 10 market value increases this season

There are two Englishmen in this list of the top 10 players with the greatest increase in their market values this season from Europe’s top five leagues, with Kobbie Mainoo just missing out in 11th place.

We’ve differentiated players with the same increase in market value by the percentage increase, with all data courtesy of Transfermarkt.

Here are the market value decreases if you’re a Negative Nancy.

10) Takefusa Kubo (Real Sociedad): €25m to €60m (+€35m)

Always good to see a European giant drop a clanger in the transfer market, but while it may seem as though Real Madrid did just that by letting Kubo leave for just €6.5m in the summer of 2022, they will also reportedly earn 50% of any future sale from Real Sociedad above €4m, and will either earn a significant fee should he move elsewhere, or be able to buy him back for a modest sum, as rumours suggest they may do.

With nine goals and seven assists in La Liga last term and a further 10 goal contributions this season, Kubo is arguably the standout forward beyond the usual suspects of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid. Reports in January suggested Manchester United were looking to offer Antony in exchange for the Japan international, as we offered a half-eaten sandwich we found on the street to a guy munching his way through a gourmet roast dinner.

9) Joao Neves (Benfica): €10m to €45m (+€35m)

The new Manchester United transfer team – who seem to be making plays despite no sitting CEO, sporting director or any structure at all as of yet – were reportedly sniffing around the midfielder in January with a view to a summer move, presumably without having googled his price tag.

They apparently viewed a 19-year-old central midfielder from Benfica who’s made 65 senior appearances as a ‘priority investment’ after a ‘challenging season’. Who are they, Chelsea?

He’s got a £103m release clause so they will have to be very like Chelsea indeed, but the Portuguese side currently have no interest in losing their new Enzo Fernandez. ‘Under no circumstances did Sport Lisboa e Benfica enter into talks with Manchester United,’ a statement read, making their stance abundantly clear.

8) Savio (Girona): €5m to €40m (+€35)

His starring role for Girona this season has earned him a move to the Spanish side’s much bigger brother Manchester City (which is all a bit grim) and a call-up for Brazil for the latest round of friendlies against England and Belgium. It’s all coming up roses for Savio.

7) Jeremy Doku (Manchester City): €28m to €65m (+€37m)

During the first half of the season we all thought it was very unfair that Pep Guardiola not only suddenly decided that he wanted to play with a proper winger again, having done without and won a treble, but also that he appeared to have signed a bloody brilliant one out of nowhere.

Doku was giving Premier League right-backs a hell of a time of it, with his zenith the extraoardinary 6-1 win over Bournemouth, in which he scored and claimed four assists.

But it’s all gone a bit stale, with no futher contributions other than a goal in the FA Cup third round against Huddersfield in his 19 appearances since.

Jeremy Doku joined Manchester City from Rennes in the summer.

6) Samu Omorodion (Alaves): €200k to €40m (€39.8m)

Our favourite purely because of the 19900% mark-up. Surely either the appraiser in July or Omorodion’s more recent Transfermarkt assessor has got this wrong, and we would suggest they probably both have a bit.

The striker – on loan at Alaves from Atletico Madrid – has got eight goals in 27 La Liga appearances this season.

5) Warren Zaire-Emery (PSG): €20m to €60m (+€40m)

He became France’s youngest post-war player and Les Blues youngest scorer in a century after Didier Deschamps handed the 17-year-old a start against Gibraltar in November, and Thierry Henry – who coached him at U21 level – believes there is “no limit” to what the midfielder can achieve.

After mainly substitute appearances for PSG having broken into the first team last term, Zaire-Emery is now a stalwart under Luis Enrique.

4) Cole Palmer (Chelsea): €15m to €55m (+€40m)

He’s flown in the face of his teammates mediocrity. While most of them have at best stagnated and at worst crumbled under the pressure of playing for Chelsea, Palmer has – up until recently – borne the entire creative load of a £1bn squad with the confidence of a man who’s thrown ten successive apple cores into the living room bin.

Of players under the age of 21 in Europe’s top five leagues, only Jude Bellingham (29) has more than Palmer’s 28 goal contributions. Only Mohamed Salah (1.19), Erling Haaland (1.07) and Diogo Jota (1.07) have more goals and assists per 90 minutes than Palmer (0.98).

Credit where it’s due, though Chelsea have got an awful lot wrong in the transfer market, they appear to have absolutely nailed this one.

3) Viktor Gyokeres (Sporting): €13m to €55m (+€42m)

It pays to be young in terms of the market value increase real quiz, but as Gyokeres proves, it also pays to be plucked from relative obscurity. Few fans outside England or Sweden would even have heard of the 25-year-old before the summer, when Sporting Lisbon paid Coventry City €20m for his services. And even then, most radars won’t have started pinging until December, when the striker needs of Arsenal and Chelsea led transfer gossipmongers to tip them with a move for the in-form marksman.

36 goals and 14 assists in 39 games is just too good a return to ignore though, and makes the face-value ridiculousness of a 323% mark-up in eight months a pill sweet enough for Arsenal, Manchester United or other interested parties to swallow. That £86m release clause doesn’t seem so silly anymore.

2) Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid) : €120m to €180m (+€60m)

It’s fair to say he’s enjoying life at Real Madrid, leading the La Liga goalscoring charts, seemingly cruising to first league title and looking forward to a Champions League quarter-final against Manchester City next month.

And he’ll soon be able to rely on Kylian Mbappe to lessen a goalscoring burden that the England international’s taken on his shoulders as though it’s a scarf made of butterfly wings and meringue.

None of his feats thus far or in the future will surpass his decision to disregard Sir Alex Ferguson’s sweet nothings on his tour of the run-down Manchester United training complex in March 2020. Good call, Jude. Good call.

READ: Who will win the 2024 Ballon d’Or? Bellingham the early favourite but Mbappe, Haaland are lurking

1) Lamine Yamal (Barcelona): €0m to €75m (+€75m)

Umbrella by Rihanna Ft. Jay Z was No.1 when Yamal was born in the summer of 2007. Thierry Henry was moving to Barcelona and Fernando Torres to Liverpool.

“Let’s see what the future holds without comparing him with Messi,” Xavi said when the 16-year-old recently signed a new contract until 2026 with a £1bn release clause, before mentioning Messi’s name a further four times in his press conference.

He became La Liga’s youngest ever goalscorer after a strike against Granada in October and is also the youngest to record a goal for Spain after scoring on debut against Georgia a month earlier. It’s hard not to get carried away, and while he won’t be Messi, Barcelona can be reasonably confident he’ll be more Messi than Giovani Dos Santos or Gerard Deulofeu.