Alexander Isak almost certainly won’t leave Newcastle for Liverpool but if he does, he will join the legion of £50m transfers between Premier League clubs.
This is the summer of the intra-Premier League transfer but Isak and others considering future employers closer to home have some way to go to reach this list.
**22) Aaron Wan-Bissaka – £45m rising to £50m (Crystal Palace to Manchester United, June 2019)**It is unknown exactly when Manchester United added Wan-Bissaka to an apparent 804-strong list of potential right-backs, but they cannot pretend it was any earlier than about halfway through his first full season of top-flight football.
Crystal Palace cashed in on stock which would never be quite so high, raking in about £1.19m for each of his Premier League career appearances to that point. Wan-Bissaka remains the most expensive uncapped English player ever.
**21) Kyle Walker – £45m rising to £50m (Spurs to Manchester City, July 2017)**One prominent journalist called it ‘the moment we all knew the Premier League had lost its mind,’ but even with Walker’s regression as the captain who betrayed Pep Guardiola mid-season his signing was transformational for player and club.
Even if it was wild to see Walker reign as the most expensive defender ever for a few months, he will leave after eight years with about twice as many trophies won.
**20) Amadou Onana – £50m (Everton to Aston Villa, July 2024)**With Douglas Luiz forced out in a PSR panic, Aston Villa prepared for their Champions League debut by scouring the Premier League for clubs in similar financial disorder, who also happened to boast one of the country’s better midfielders.
19) Ben White – £50m (Brighton to Arsenal, July 2021)
The laborious false equivalences with Raphael Varane did not last long. Arsenal had a series of bids rejected for a defender whose entire career consisted of a single season in each of League Two, League One, the Championship and the Premier League as Brighton knew what they had and how much it was worth.
18) Fernando Torres – £50m (Liverpool to Chelsea, January 2011)
A generationally dreadful British record transfer, yet one which delivered Torres the trophies he craved when leaving Liverpool after a productive but entirely potless three and a half years.
17) Richarlison – £50m rising to £60m (Everton to Spurs, July 2022)
With a ‘nonsense’ and ultimately phantom £85m Barcelona bid firmly in his rear-view mirror, Richarlison and Everton both felt it was time to cash in on four decent, hard-working seasons when Spurs chucked a healthy profit their way.
It has been far from seamless in north London for the Brazilian, who has been hoist by the disallowed-goal-followed-by-booking-for-removing-shirt-when-celebrating petard an absurd number of times. But the bloke has won a Europa League so…
16) Pedro Neto – £51.4m rising to £54m (Wolves to Chelsea, August 2024)
Arsenal, Manchester City, Newcastle and Spurs were sniffing around but Chelsea live for the hijack and swooped at the latest annual Wolves car boot sale.
Was six goals and nine assists in 45 games across his debut season worth it? Doesn’t matter when you feed off transfer vibes.
**15) Matheus Nunes – £53m (Wolves to Manchester City, September 2023)**The repurposing of Nunes as a competent right-back should not mask how ludicrous it is that Manchester City can put more than £50m down on a player the manager later publicly decries as “not clever enough” to play in his preferred position.
**14) Romeo Lavia – £53m rising to £58m (Southampton to Chelsea, August 2023)**The numbers are a little shady but they paint a compelling picture: Lavia has missed more than three times as many Chelsea games through injury (67) as he has played for the Blues since joining (21).
There is a phenomenal player within but as his own personal physio said recently, “questions gradually arise”.
**13) Mason Mount – £55m rising to £60m (Chelsea to Manchester United, July 2023)**Yet it is a similar story for a player Lavia might have passed in the Stamford Bridge departures lounge. Mount has missed 50 games through injury since making his move to Manchester United, for whom he has played 46 times.
But obviously Ruben Amorim loves the manager’s dream. “When you see that kind of guy like Mason working hard every day, eating well, having ice baths, when you have this kind of player you just want to help him,” said a head coach who needs some of that assistance to be reciprocated.
12) Dominic Solanke – £55m rising to £65m (Bournemouth to Spurs, August 2024)
Liverpool had a buy-back clause but chose not to use it, leaving Spurs with a free hit after Arsenal were ruled out on the basis they do not spend significant sums on actual forwards.
They can hardly be dissatisfied with their lot from a heavily disrupted 16-goal season which culminated with Solanke scoring in three of four Europa League quarter and semi-final legs before lifting the sodding trophy in Bilbao.
**11) Marc Cucurella – £56m rising to £63m (Brighton to Chelsea, August 2022)**Manchester City had offers of £30m and £40m rejected before balking at demands of around £50m. Chelsea picked up the slack and it remains one of the biggest Premier League transfer overpays of all time.
Cucurella has at least started to repay the faith and fee, becoming a bastion of reliability under Enzo Maresca as a European champion with Spain.
10) Riyad Mahrez – £60m (Leicester to Manchester City, July 2018)
Had things gone to plan then Mahrez would have honoured only the first season of a four-year contract he signed with newly-crowned Premier League champions Leicester. The Algerian felt he had a gentleman’s agreement that would allow him to walk proudly out of the door in summer 2017 but the Foxes were unmoved.
Mahrez might not regret that delayed exit in retrospect. It allowed Pep Guardiola to crystallise his interest in a player who would win 10 further trophies at the Etihad.
**9) Matheus Cunha – £62.5m (Wolves to Manchester United, June 2025)**It feels like the sort of signing Sir Alex Ferguson would have made, just not from 15th in the Premier League table.
Cunha only finished one place lower with Wolves but that was not for his own lack of effort or ability in a season spent scoring 17 goals, assisting six and apologising countless times for intimating that he would quite like to leave at some point.
**8) Kai Havertz – £65m (Chelsea to Arsenal, June 2023)**Rarely has a transfer ever continued to polarise the footballing world long after it was made quite so fundamentally as Arsenal throwing their new-found title weight behind a Chelsea cast-off.
When Arsenal needed a Proper Striker it was decided by Mikel Arteta that a sort of centre-forward would do, even though he was signed as Granit Xhaka’s midfield successor at the time. A total of 42 combined goals and assists in 87 games is a fine record for a player whose strengths are ignored and shortcomings highlighted like few others.
**7) Wesley Fofana – £70m rising to £75m (Leicester to Chelsea, August 2022)**The final boss of the Lavia-Mount strand of player. Fofana has missed 105 club games through injury while contracted to Chelsea, for whom he has played 34 times.
The Frenchman is still 19 Blues games from surpassing the number of appearances he made for Leicester. Thomas Tuchel was in charge when they signed him!
6) Virgil van Dijk – £75m (Southampton to Liverpool, January 2018)
Liverpool received a slapped wrist for their ‘illegal approach’ of Van Dijk but the inevitable could only be delayed for so long by Southampton.
More than seven years later it looks like Saints were fleeced if anything.
**5) Romelu Lukaku – £75m rising to £90m (Everton to Manchester United, July 2017)**The transfer narrative that defined summer 2017 revolved around Lukaku, Alvaro Morata, Manchester United, Chelsea and some quite uncomfortable comparative undertones.
There were precisely no winners from the sorry old mess. It is a great bit that former Chelsea and Manchester United striker Lukaku’s three best goalscoring Premier League seasons were with Everton and West Brom.
**4) Harry Maguire – £80m (Leicester to Manchester United, August 2019)**Another player Manchester City flirted with before, in Guardiola’s words, it was decided the club with a basically unlimited budget “could not afford it”, Maguire was Manchester United’s answer to the conundrum Liverpool posed with Van Dijk: what if teams actually spent considerable money on a centre-half?
Maguire’s greatest asset since has been mental resilience. He was stripped of a captaincy awarded to him within half a year of joining and has been ostracised by two managers before both realised their mistake and brought him back into the fold.
3) Jack Grealish – £100m (Aston Villa to Manchester City, August 2021)
A player so good Aston Villa had to sign three before he left to replace him.
Grealish was the free-running show pony in a modest stable, who will soon be turned to glue or lasagna after being consumed by the great Manchester City outdoors.
2) Declan Rice – £100m rising to £105m (West Ham to Arsenal, July 2023)
Arsenal played an absolute blinder in laying the groundwork before keeping the bidding at a controlled level. Manchester City made one offer and promptly withdrew from the race upon its rejection, leaving the Gunners with a clear track.
Rice will probably have to at least match his West Ham trophy haul of one at Arsenal for the signing to be considered a success, but any shortcoming on that front thus far has certainly not been his.
**1) Moises Caicedo – £100m rising to £115m (Brighton to Chelsea, August 2023)**Chelsea, however, made an absolute mess of their record move for a midfield cheat code that summer, but Caicedo has ultimately rendered that moot by growing into his role impeccably.