“Feel more confident about our transfer business than I have done since the fall of the Roman Empire,” wrote a Chelsea supporter friend of this column.
Chelsea are of course a transfer outlier, churning a huge roster of players, deploying ultra-long contracts (and hence amortisation periods) and happy to break even in the market.
How you view your own club’s business over the past few weeks will depend in large part on the extent to which your dreams marry with its owners’ ambitions, tempered by the financial reality of balance sheets and PSR constraints.
Headline figures quoted for transfers are frequently misleading. Add-ons, wages and incentives, and contract lengths all factor into a club’s P&L reality, so that net spending figures in any single window tell only a partial story.
Nevertheless, this summer’s numbers do appear to reinforce the general wisdom about the stratification of the Premier League. Check out the table below comparing net outlays with last season’s league finishing positions.
The biggest net spenders were those likely to be in the mix for Champions League qualification; two teams in Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur who will each feel that last year’s poor league showings belied what they see as their big club status; plus Everton with a sparkly new stadium to pep the club up.
Each of the three promoted teams has sought to upgrade squad quality, averaging a net £92m spend.
Perhaps most telling is the bottom eight clubs in the spending rankings, averaging a £24m inflow. With the exception of Chelsea, one could conclude that each is accepting of life in mid-table with hopes of pushing for European qualification balanced against fear of the drop.
For them, the transfer market is about finding bargains and selling smartly. Fan reaction in each case will depend on where a club has come from as much as where it might be hoped to be going to. Contrast Bournemouth or Brentford, say, with Aston Villa.
Ultimately, as ever, results on the pitch will prove the arbiter of this window’s £3bn business.
Beside the seaside
A quick trawl through all the Premier League clubs reveals just one with 2025-26 season tickets still on sale: Brighton and Hove Albion.
The competition’s huge popularity has emboldened clubs to expand individual matchday tickets at the expense of season tickets which offer certain, upfront revenue but at lower profit margins. If you’re on your club’s season ticket waiting list, don’t hold your breath.
What to make of the availability of season tickets at Brighton then? Could there be a correlation with the club’s growing reputation as a canny adder of value in the transfer market (see above), the downside of which is fan fears that there is a ceiling to their ambitions?
Or is it that, even 14 years after moving into the Amex Stadium, their expanded fan base still has comparatively shallow roots? Perhaps, though, it’s just a different business model.
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com