Our players are doomed with their low price tag. Mido is £6m is having trouble starting ahead of £14m Afonso Alves. Shawky as well is £700.000 only and with his injury, he will find it extremely hard to get back to selection as the manager will likely prefer to start with the £4.5 Digard.

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Shawky joined Boro from Ahly for £700.000 only

Mido vs Ibrahimovic, Drogba, Berbatov, Keane and Afonso Alves:

Egyptian star Mido and the most successful professional abroad so far is only £6m after over seven years in Europe. This is extremely low price tag for a striker with Mido's ability. But injuries and spending much time on subs bench meant that his price tag remains low when compared to strikers who played alongside him since the start of his career.

In Ajax, Mido joined the club for only 3m EUROs. Zlatan Ibrahimovic joined them for around 9M EUROs. The Egyptian helped Ajax to win the cup, League and super cup and so Zlatan stayed on the bench in his first season.

However, after the Egyptian appeared in slightly poor form with the start of his 2nd season at Ajax, the 9m striker took his place and Mido had to leave to seek first team football.

Keane £20m to Liverpool

In Marseille, Mido was even more expensive than Drogba and he came with big reputation surrounding him after leading Celta Vigo to Champions League for the first time in their history. So, Mido and Drogba started together. The result was in the favor of Drogba who took advantage of Mido's assists and made a huge name for himself after leading OM to UEFA cup final.

Mido at this time, suffered an injury and Marseille sacked their coach. The new coach preferred to play one sriker at front and his choice was Drogba as the latter scored more than Mido.

While Mido's price tag remained the same at Marseille, Drogba joined Chelsea for a massive £35m sale.

At Spurs, Mido was priced at £6m but he managed to play as starter in his first season alongside either Keane or Defoe as he was the only target man in the squad and was in a superb form.

In the 2nd season at Spurs, they signed Berbatov for £12-14m. The £14m striker had to play while Mido had to sit on bench. Due to this, Mido's price tag remained £6m while Keane joined Liverpool for £20m and Berbatov joined Manchester United for £34m.

This forced Mido to leave Spurs and Join Boro. However, frequent long term injuries for the Egyptian forced the side to buy Afonso Alves for £14m. A striker with this much money spent on him will have to start. Mido can be in good form, can battle to lose weight, can score three goals in three matches but Afonso costs £14m and has to play.

Shawky vs Digard, O'Neil and Arca:

Mohamed Shawky joined Boro for just £700.000. This is one of the lowest price tags for a player in the Premier League. The Egyptian is worth at least 10 times the cost that Boro paid to Al-Ahly to sign him. Due to his low price tag, the fans put pressure on the coach Southgate to drop Shawky and start with Digard who costs £4.5m.

Shawky is now injured and will be out for 2-3 weeks, the news reached Boro fans, a realistic Boro fan said on the club forum: "This is perversly a good thing, Southgate will have been feeling the pressure to drop Shawky for Digard anyway even though the Egyptian has been in good form. Every time Digard has come on we seem to score or at least pick up the pace. Shawky has been a real bargain and will get plenty of games but Digard ws a £4m Southgate buy and should play.

The above comment proves what EP is trying to say. If both players at same ability, money wins. The player who costs more wins. This is a major issue hindering our players' progress in the European leagues. They are cheap. The clubs didn't cough the money to sign them. So, nobody will care if they stayed on bench or not. The fans won't be angry. The managers won't be under pressure.

Ghaly vs Zokora, David Bentley, Luka Modric and Aaron Lennon:

Ghaly's price tag is around £2-3m only. On the other hand, David bentley is £17m, Lennon costs almost the same as Bentley and Zokora costs around £8-10m. Ghaly is the cheapest midfielder in Tottenham so he will have to sit on bench while others start. Ghaly could be better player than others with double or triple the price tag but he will not play unless he turns to be a star and clubs splash the cash to sign him for several millions. This will put pressures on the coach from supporters to play him over others.

Solution:

There is no short term solution for this issue. Egyptian players will have to make big achievements in order to increase their prices in the transfer market. Winning the African Cup alone will not increase the players' price tag. Qualifying to World Cup and doing well at this level is the way to go. On the club level, our players will have to have super impact (like Amr Zaki) or win something with their clubs, like Champions league, UEFA Cup, qualify to Europe and our players must have big role in that.

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