Premier League breaks summer transfer record after £3.198bn spending surge

Premier League clubs broke their all-time summer transfer record this summer when total spending reached £3.198bn, a mark pushed past last year’s £3.14bn after Iliman Ndiaye’s deadline-day move from Everton to Manchester City for an initial £60m.

Figures provided to BBC Sport by Paul Macdonald, founder of FootballTransfers.com, show the new total dwarfs the £1.13bn spent by clubs five years ago and underlines a sharp rise in market activity across the English top flight compared with recent windows.

Four of the 11 most expensive signings in the history of football occurred this summer, three of them involving Premier League clubs: Chelsea paid £117m for Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa, Manchester City spent £116m on Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest, and Liverpool agreed an initial £106m deal for Bradley Barcola from Paris St-Germain that could rise to £123m.

Tottenham set a club-record fee for Sandro Tonali that could reach £100m and also signed Mateus Fernandes from West Ham for £85m and Savio from Manchester City for an initial £75m potentially rising to £85m; Manchester City paid £85.6m for Ayyoub Bouaddi from Lille while Arsenal acquired Bruno Guimaraes for £75m from Newcastle and Manchester United bought Carlos Baleba from Brighton for £70m.

Domestic transfers dominated this window: 38% of fee-paying moves were between Premier League clubs, up from 30% last year, and that proportion rises to 48% when Premier League teams bought players from lower levels of the English pyramid; newly-promoted Ipswich Town spent more on new signings than Barcelona, AC Milan, Juventus and reigning European champions PSG.

Outside England, Yan Diomande’s transfer to Real Madrid and Anthony Gordon’s move from Newcastle to Barcelona are the only completed deals so far this summer involving fees above £60m that were not made by Premier League clubs, while Bundesliga and Ligue 1 clubs have taken in more transfer income than they have spent.

The review of the market cites several factors behind the trend of Premier League clubs buying from one another: the appeal of players already proven in the division, disappointment in last season’s high-fee arrivals from the Bundesliga, occasional accounting-driven deals between the same clubs (notably Chelsea and Aston Villa), and higher asking prices from foreign sellers when English teams express interest.

Despite significant outbound sales by English clubs this summer, the Premier League’s net spend for the window remains over £1bn, by far the most in Europe.