Tottenham have had a nightmarish season in the Premier League.
Premier League clubs spent a combined £460 million on agent fees across the last two transfer windows, with Tottenham Hotspur ranking eighth in the table having paid out £21.38 million, a figure that looks increasingly difficult to justify given the club’s current position in the relegation zone.
The figures, covering the period from the end of the January 2025 window through to the January 2026 transfer window, paint a revealing picture of how clubs across the division have invested in building their squads.
For Tottenham, the spending on intermediaries sits in the middle of the pack, but the return on that investment has been catastrophic. GiveMeSport noted that their £21.38 million on agent fees represents arguably the worst value for money of any club in the division, with a genuine possibility of relegation looming over a club that should be competing for European football.
At the top of the table sits Chelsea, whose £65.10 million on agent fees dwarfs every other club in the Premier League by a significant margin. It is more than double the spending of every side except Liverpool, Manchester City and Aston Villa, and more than the bottom six clubs combined. The Blues currently sit sixth, five points clear of the bottom half but with a difficult run of fixtures ahead, making that outlay look questionable at best.
Manchester City are third on £37.35 million, with Aston Villa second on £38.44 million. Arsenal, who sit top of the Premier League, spent a comparatively modest £32.14 million, while Liverpool’s £33.88 million funded the arrivals of Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike among others.
At the other end of the spectrum, Burnley’s £7.35 million is the lowest in the division, followed by Everton on £9.99 million and Sunderland on £10.62 million.
Big investment, poor return for Tottenham
The broader picture confirms what most already suspected. Sustained, intelligent spending tends to correlate with league position, with the top five spenders on agent fees all currently occupying the top six places in the table. For Tottenham, sitting eighth in spending and seventeenth in the league, the gap between investment and return has rarely been more painfully exposed.