During the summer, Premier League clubs not only broke the previous record for transfer spending, they smashed through it.
A flurry of activity in the market and some major deals getting across the line, such as Liverpool dropping almost £450m in one window to land the likes of Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz, breaking the British transfer record twice in the process, played a major role in total spending from English football’s top tier reaching an eye-watering £3.19bn (€3.6bn), up from the £2.46bn record set in the summer of 2023. The total global spend for the summer stood at around €13bn across all leagues.
The Premier League is the biggest spender in the global transfer market, its ability to spend major sums underpinned by the huge broadcast deals that it has in place at home and abroad and the major commercial and matchday revenues it is also able to pull in.
The Premier League’s net spend was another record breaker at €1.5bn, more than €1bn higher than the second-placed league on the list - the Saudi Pro League. Interestingly, the Turkish Super Lig was third with €179m, followed by the top tiers in Qatar, Italy, UAE, USA, Spain and Mexico. The German Bundesliga and Ligue 1 in France saw significant outflow in players for high fees, including Wirtz’s move to Liverpool from Bayer Leverkusen.
But while deals such as Isak and Wirtz might appear to suggest otherwise, there is data to support the idea that clubs are, in the main, starting to be more reluctant to spend huge amounts of money on marquee signings.
While the spending has increased, data from TransferRoom points to the bucking of the trend of major money signings. Looking at the list of the 15 most expensive signings in football history, just one deal features from what was a record-breaking summer, that of Isak’s £125m move from Newcastle United to Liverpool.
Top 15 deals
kylian mbappe neymar psg
The data, adjusted for inflation and current day revenue, puts the Isak deal at 12th on the overall list at €145m, the only deal from 2025 to make the top 15. The huge activity that was seen between 2017 and 2018 dominates, with the major deals for Neymar Jnr (€342.8m, Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain, 2017), Kylian Mbappe (€263.3m Monaco to PSG, 2018), and Ousmane Dembele (€228.6m, Borussia Dortmund to Barcelona, 2017) making up the top three.
Even Manchester City’s acquisition of Jack Grealish in 2021 demonstrated a more bullish approach to spending big money on superstar players, with the £100m sum then, adjusted for inflation and current day revenue, according to TransferRoom data, sitting at €175.2m for the present day market.
The data suggests there is now more of a cautious approach to making such splashy signings, a trend that has only become more entrenched through the wider use of data analytics in the game, where clubs, in most cases seeing their recruitment led by sporting directors, seek to find undervalued talent to give them the edge they require on the pitch.
There has also been an increased focus on stronger player trading, something that even the biggest clubs have had to master. Clubs are not only judged on the talent that they have brought into a club for large sums, it is also the ability for them to sell those players at a good price further on down the line.
When a player is signed for a club, the transfer fee, regardless of how the agreement of when the tangible cash will change hands for the deal is laid out, is costed for in the accounts through an accounting metric known as amortisation. That is where the guaranteed transfer sum is divided by the number of years of the contract, which is now capped at five years, with the ‘book value’ of a player diminishing by that cost until the deal runs down. For example, a £50m signing over five years is £10m per year, a sum that reduces from the amortisation costs with each passing year of a player’s contract. Sell a player for £50m two years into a deal and the club has, effectively, booked a £20m profit.
This is the game behind the game, and clubs that can master the art of strong player trading have the ability to do more in the transfer market, even overcoming challenges such as smaller revenue streams, as has been seen with the success of Brighton & Hove Albion and Brentford’s player trading model.
Data presented by TransferRoom provided insight into just which sporting directors have been able to identify undervalued talent, seeing a return on their investment through added value of the player from the price point paid.
Man City top the lot
Txiki Begiristain
TransferRoom’s Net Value Added metric looks to quantify the total impact a player has had for a club, both financially and on the pitch. It combines sell on value, which is the transfer fee received or current market value of a player, with points added value, which translates a player’s on-field contribution (goals, assists, defensive actions) into a monetary equivalent based on the average cost per league point.
By aggregating these values across a squad or over time, clubs can assess how effectively their recruitment strategy has generated return. For sporting directors, it offers a way to benchmark performance beyond transfer spend or silverware achieved, highlighting who has built the most value per pound invested.
Topping the list in terms of net value added is Manchester City’s former sporting director Txiki Begiristain, whose 23 player signings over the last decade had an investment cost of €875m, but net value added to that investment of €455m.
Second on the list is Timmo Hardung (Eintracht Frankfurt), at €425m net value added from €171m investment across 22 deals, then comes Dougie Freedman (Crystal Palace) at €374m in net value added from €436m in investment across 29 deals. The rest of the top 10 from the last decade was made up of Marco Di Vaio (Bologna), Ross Wilson (Glasgow Rangers, Nottingham Forest), Simon Rolfes (Bayer Leverkusen), Phil Giles (Brentford), Tony D’Amico (Atalanta, Hellas Verona), Luis Campos (Lille), and Frederic Massara (AC Milan, Stade Rennais).
TransferRoom analysis included data from over 8,000 paid transfers revealing that nearly 50% of deals fail, with failure defined by a mix of financial, performance, and contextual red flags. The most common issues include overpaying (36% of failures involved fees 30% above expected value), underperformance (49% had ratings or potential below club average), poor tactical fit (10% had suitability scores under 60%), and injury impact (13% missed over 15 matches in three years).
Interestingly, a significant portion of failed transfers (28%) showed none of these red flags, pointing to other factors such as personality clashes, managerial turnover, or simply not being rated by the manager.
The transfer market appears to be evolving. While there have been some outliers this summer the broader trend, despite more money being in the game than ever before, has been to move away from blindly paying huge sums of money, the work that goes on behind the scenes to determine whether or not a player is worth the outlay is more detailed than ever, and has highlighted the importance of having a strong sporting director in place.