Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, and all the other top clubs in the Premier League have made major headlines this summer transfer window by splashing serious cash on big names like Florian Wirtz, Bryan Mbeumo, Viktor Gyokeres, and Joao Pedro this summer transfer window.
But there were so many other quality signings made in this window so far that could go a long way in shaping relegation battles, the fights for the Conference League, and perhaps even the battles in the top five, including the Premier League title race.
So in the spirit of the moves that didn’t get quite the same press, let’s break down the best 10 transfers of the 2025 summer window that cost teams under 25 million pounds. And because free transfers are too obvious, let’s only look at the moves that came with a permanent fee.
Simon Adingra to Sunderland, £21M
There’s a chance that Simon Adingra goes down as one of the best moves of the summer 2025 transfer window, because for the price of less than 25 million pounds, Sunderland are getting a new best player and one of the best young wingers in the Premier League.
Seriously, if Adingra were purchased from a club like Ajax, Dortmund, or Benfica and not Brighton, he would have went for double this price. We are talking about a 23-year-old winger who scored six goals with 1.1 key passes and 1.6 dribbles completed per game in his mini-breakout 2023/24 season.
Granted, 21 million pounds is a fair price for a player coming off a pretty underwhelming 2024/25 season, but that’s the whole point about buying low. You bank on talent, sign players at a low point in their value, and then put faith in their skills so that they blow up into stars.
Adingra isn’t a guaranteed top player for Sunderland, but he’s worth gambling on and, at worst, should already be the best winger in the squad for the Black Cats in their triumphant return to the Premier League.
READ MORE: The top 10 young wingers in the Premier League
Enzo Le Fee to Sunderland, £20M
Enzo Le Fee already played an important role in Sunderland’s fortunes last season, as the former Roma and Rennes midfielder helped the club return to the English Premiership by averaging 1.6 key passes per game with 2.5 combined dribbles completed and fouls drawn per match in the Championship.
Those aren’t numbers that will blow anyone away, but Le Fee was a solid cog in the wheel for Sunderland and bounced back a little bit after a disappointing spell in Rome and a decent but certainly not great season with Rennes.
The reason why Le Fee is framed in this way is that he looked like the next big thing in French football during the 2022/23 season for surprise package Lorient, as he was not just one of the best young midfielders in Ligue 1 that year, but he was one of the best players in the entire league, period.
That’s the kind of player Sunderland have secured for just 20 million pounds from a loan purchase squad. We are talking about a deep-lying midfielder who had 10 goal contributions, 1.9 key passes per game, 1.9 dribbles completed per match, 1.8 fouls drawn per game, and a combined 4.1 tackles and interceptions per match in the 2022/23 season. That’s a great price to get a player with that potential who is just entering his peak years at 25.
Dario Essugo to Chelsea, £19M
Chelsea are known for flashing massive gobs of cash on the transfer market, and they’ve been known to spend big on midfielders, breaking records to sign current starters Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo.
But this summer, Chelsea’s signings have been on the more subdued side, and although Dario Essugo was technically brought in last winter on a pre-arranged deal for the summer, I’d like to include Essugo for the simple excuse of praising him and Chelsea for this move.
Chelsea basically jumped on Essugo faster than everyone else, because it was obvious to anyone watching the first half of the 2024/25 La Liga season that Essugo, Las Palmas’s standout in the defensive midfield, was special.
Essugo finished the 2024/25 campaign with 3.8 combined tackles and interceptions per game and a pass completion percentage above 85. In a league filled with rough and tumble defensive midfielders, Essugo was honestly the best of them, and he is the perfect understudy to Caicedo. Oh, and he’s only 20.
READ MORE: The 15 most underrated summer transfers in European football history
Anton Stach to Leeds, £17M
Another defensive midfielder who deserves more praise than he gets, Anton Stach could have made the jump from the Bundesliga to an even bigger Premier League side, such as Tottenham Hotspur, but instead he ends up at Leeds United to help them in their return to the Premier League.
Stach is going to be a fixture at the heart of the Leeds midfield, and he’s a midfield general who isn’t afraid to get nasty and snap into some tackles. Every newcomer to the Premier League needs that grit in midfield, and Stach brings it.
Although he had a pretty good season for Hoffenheim in 2024/25, he did his finest work before in the 2023/24 season when Hoffenheim weren’t sucking wind, and he was also fantastic for Mainz before that as a U23 talent.
Stach averaged more than two tackles and two interceptions per game in the 2023/24 season and regularly had more interceptions than tackles per game at Mainz. He’s one of the best in the business at reading the game, and in his prime at 26, he’s going to turn a lot of heads in the Premier League and help keep Leeds afloat.
Maxim De Cuyper to Brighton, £17M
Club Brugge are perhaps the most underrated side in European football, because they are a consistent noise-maker in the Champions League (remember that time they almost beat a Zinedine Zidane-coached Real Madrid?).
Last season, Brugge had a few more standouts who staked their claims for bigger moves in European football, and arguably the most underrated was versatile left back Maxim De Cuyper.
The 24-year-old joins Brighton as a much-needed reinforcement at the position after star man Pervis Estupinan made a surprising move to AC Milan to replace the Saudi-bound French star Theo Hernandez.
De Cuyper is more than good enough to fill Estupinan’s shoes, and while it’s not easy replacing one of the Premier League’s best left backs, De Cuyper’s combination of playmaking (he once had 10 assists in a season) and ball-winning says that he can be that guy.
Granit Xhaka to Sunderland, £13M
Obviously at 32 years old, former Arsenal captain Granit Xhaka has no resale value, but Sunderland aren’t buying Xhaka with any intention of making a profit. They are paying a small fee for a proven leader at the Premier League and Bundesliga level who is just two seasons removed from being a key starter and veteran leader in a historically great Bayer Leverkusen side that went undefeated in the German top flight.
And the Swiss star was quite good last season for Leverkusen, too, averaging 1.5 key passes and 1.5 tackles per game while bossing opposition midfielders on and off the ball with his strength in possession and man-marking.
Xhaka is one of the better deep-lying midfielders in European football and arguably better than ever as a playmaker, registering seven assists for Die Werkself in 2024/25 despite it being a disappointing season for Xabi Alonso’s men as a whole.
If Xhaka can pull up his teammates by their bootstraps and lead them to safety, Sunderland will have made far more money from survival than the meager 13 million pounds invested in him.
Cristhian Mosquera to Arsenal, £13M
Arsenal made three major signings this summer transfer window in former Chelsea winger Noni Madueke, Real Sociedad gem holding midfielder Martin Zubimendi, and the biggest fish of them all, Viktor Gyokeres at striker.
And even though Cristhian Mosquera won’t be a starter for Arsenal – at least, not right away – he could end up being as good as any of those signings when it’s all said and done, looking at the price tag.
Mosquera was one of the best center backs in La Liga last season for Valencia, helping the Bats avoid any more discussion of potential relegation. The 21-year-old surprisingly didn’t get more looks from Barcelona and Real Madrid on the transfer market, especially considering how poor Madrid’s defense was.
He was neearly flawless with his passing with a pass completion rate of 91.2, and he was dribbled past just 0.2 times per game. Mosquera is a Rolls Royce of a defender and potentially the next great Spanish center back, and it may not be long before he challenges to start alongside William Saliba.
ALSO READ: The top 10 signings of the Premier League summer window
Caoimhin Kelleher to Brentford, £13M
Caoimhin Kelleher was just as good as Alisson Becker between the sticks for Liverpool when the Brazilian superstar went down with an injury, and while there was understandably never the slightest hint of competition with a goalkeeper of Alisson’s stature (he’s arguably the best on the planet), there was an understanding amongst Kopites that Kelleher was ready to blossom as a starter.
Capable of starting for just about any team in the Premier League besides Liverpool, Kelleher will get the opportunity to do just that at Brentford, who produced one of the only keepers in the Premier League who can even come close to rivaling Alisson in Arsenal star David Raya.
But Kelleher is actually the replacement for Mark Flekken, who is a good keeper despite being memed for some rather infamous errors. Flekken is now Erik ten Hag’s shot-stopper in Leverkusen, and Kelleher is not only his replacement but his upgrade for Brentford.
Adrien Truffert to Bournemouth, £11.5M
Bournemouth are one of the smartest clubs in the transfer market, and they always seem to unearth an attacking breakout star year after year. In 2023/24, it was striker Dominic Solanke, and after they sold him off to Tottenham for a whopping 65 million pounds, they found another player valued similarly in right winger Antoine Semenyo.
What the Cherries do is they sign clearly talented players whom everyone else in Europe is undervaluing, and while Adrien Truffert isn’t going to be the next 60 million pound transfer like Solanke or Semenyo, he’s quite the get for well under 20 million pounds.
Truffert has been one of the better attacking left backs in Europe over the past handful of years, and even though he’s been a starter for Rennes in Ligue 1 since the 2020/21 season, he’s still just 23.
Full credit to Bournemouth for pulling the trigger on his transfer when everyone else was fast asleep. Truffert is a borderline elite crosser of the ball with sweet deliveries, great technique, and a brilliant work rate at bombing up the flank to join the attack.
He’s also a stupendous one-on-one defender with no more than 0.5 dribbles completed allowed per game as an attacking left back in any of his seasons as a starter in Ligue 1.
ALSO READ: Every Premier League club’s best bargain signing of all time
Diego Coppola to Brighton, £9.5M
Yet another talented young defender at a bargain price, Brighton have simply done it again with the plucking of Diego Coppola from Hellas Verona, signing the Italian side’s best player for less than 10 million pounds – forget the whole 25 million pound thing.
Coppola looks like a potentially special player and someone who can either replace Lewis Dunk as the starter next season or even fill the shoes of Jan Paul van Hecke if he gets bought up elsewhere.
The 21-year-old’s numbers at Verona last season are mind-blowing. He averaged 1.9 tackles, 2.1 interceptions, and 5.7 clearances per game last season with just 0.4 dribbles allowed per game. Brighton just got one of the best pure U23 defenders for almost nothing.
Joe Soriano is the editor of The Trivela Effect and a FanSided Hall of Famer who has covered world football since 2011. He’s led top digital communities like The Real Champs (Real Madrid) and has contributed to sites covering Tottenham, Liverpool, Juventus, and Schalke. Joe’s work has appeared in ESPN, Bleacher Report, and Sports Illustrated. He also helped manage NFL Spin Zone and Daily DDT, covering the NFL and pro wrestling, respectively.