Ranked: Top 50 most expensive Premier League transfers this summer, by true cost

Here's a dirty little secret: not every team in the Premier League has the same amount of money. Manchester City just broke the English transfer record to acquire Enzo Fernández for €145 million from Chelsea. Meanwhile, Brentford made €206 million during the entirety of the most-recently-accounted-for financial year. Especially with the advent of the league's new Squad Cost Ratio rules, or SCR, which essentially limit clubs to spend 85% of their football-related revenue and net transfer profit, different amounts of money mean different things to each different Premier League team. So, like we did last summer, we're going to rank this summer's top 50 most expensive Premier League transfers by their true cost. In other words: how much did the reported fee for a player eat up the team's revenue? And like last summer, these numbers are estimates. Premier League clubs have only reported revenues for 2024-25, so Transfermarkt's reporting is the best information we have. Since they weren't in the top flight in 2024-25, Sunderland and Leeds have their own estimates based on outside reporting and club announcements. Then for the three promoted clubs, Hull City, Coventry City, and Ipswich Town, I'm using an average of the reported revenues for the three promoted teams for the 2024-25 season. None of the three newbies are outliers with huge stadiums or international followings that would boost them above the baseline expectation. That said, let's get to it. Here's the top 50. 50. Carlos Baleba, defensive midfield, Brighton & Hove Albion to Manchester United • Transfer fee: €75.90m • Percentage of revenue: 9.76% 49. Marco Palestra, right back, Atalanta BC to Chelsea • Transfer fee: €57.00m • Percentage of revenue: 9.96% 48. Daniel Muñoz, right back, Crystal Palace to Nottingham Forest • Transfer fee: €25.70m • Percentage of revenue: 10.06% 47. Maxence Lacroix, center back, Crystal Palace to Chelsea • Transfer fee: €60.70m • Percentage of revenue: 10.60% 46. Ilyas Ansah, center forward, 1.FC Union Berlin to Hull City • Transfer fee: €17.00m • Percentage of revenue: 10.63% 45. Anan Khalaili, right back, Union Saint-Gilloise to Crystal Palace • Transfer fee: €24.50m • Percentage of revenue: 10.67% 44. Zadok Yohanna, right winger, AIK to Brighton & Hove Albion • Transfer fee: €28.00m • Percentage of revenue: 10.81% 43. Bruno Guimarães, central midfield, Newcastle United to Arsenal • Transfer fee: €87.50m • Percentage of revenue: 10.86% 42. Merlin Röhl, attacking midfield, SC Freiburg to Everton • Transfer fee: €25.00m • Percentage of revenue: 10.88% 41. Aurèle Amenda, center back, Eintracht Frankfurt to Coventry City • Transfer fee: €18.00m • Percentage of revenue: 11.25% 40. António Silva, center back, SL Benfica to AFC Bournemouth • Transfer fee: €25.00m • Percentage of revenue: 11.66% 39. Álvaro Rodríguez, center forward, Elche CF to AFC Bournemouth • Transfer fee: €25.00m • Percentage of revenue: 11.66% 38. Florentino, defensive midfield, Burnley FC to Ipswich Town • Transfer fee: €18.70m • Percentage of revenue: 11.69% 37. Ayyoub Bouaddi, central midfield, LOSC Lille to Manchester City • Transfer fee: €95.00m • Percentage of revenue: 11.69% All of you have to do is look at the cost of this move, compared to the transfer listed right before it, if you want to understand the financial state of play in the Premier League. For Manchester City, 12% of revenue gets you a breakout World Cup star, a teenage midfield phenom already on a superstar track. For a promoted team, it gets you a midfielder who just got relegated a year ago. But I also think these two deals also show the usefulness of this exercise. It's probably a 50-50 proposition as to whether Florentino or Bouaddi plays more minutes in the Premier League this season. 36. Zian Flemming, center forward, Burnley FC to Ipswich Town • Transfer fee: €19.80m • Percentage of revenue: 12.38% 35. Abdoul Ouattara, right back, RC Strasbourg Alsace to Ipswich Town • Transfer fee: €20.00m • Percentage of revenue: 12.50% 34. Ibrahim Mbaye, right winger, Paris Saint-Germain to Aston Villa • Transfer fee: €55.00m • Percentage of revenue: 12.75% 33. Bazoumana Touré, left winger, TSG 1899 Hoffenheim to Newcastle United • Transfer fee: €50.00m • Percentage of revenue: 12.80% 32. Nicolas Jackson, center forward, Chelsea to Aston Villa • Transfer fee: €55.50m • Percentage of revenue: 12.87% 31. Sávio, left winger, Manchester City to Tottenham Hotspur • Transfer fee: €87.70m • Percentage of revenue: 13.31% 30. Shea Charles, defensive midfield, Southampton FC to Fulham • Transfer fee: €30.40m • Percentage of revenue: 13.44% 29. Johan Manzambi, attacking midfield, SC Freiburg to Aston Villa • Transfer fee: €60.00m • Percentage of revenue: 13.91% 28. Dayann Methalie, left back, FC Toulouse to Sunderland • Transfer fee: €28.00m • Percentage of revenue: 14.00% 27. Exequiel Palacios, central midfield, Bayer 04 Leverkusen to Ipswich Town • Transfer fee: €22.50m • Percentage of revenue: 14.06% 26. Nico González, defensive midfield, Manchester City to Newcastle United • Transfer fee: €56.00m • Percentage of revenue: 14.34% Lots of midfielders land right in this 13-to-14-percent range: Gonzalez, Palacios, Manzambi, and Charles. The 22-year-old Charles has played a lot of professional minutes at a position where youngsters rarely get trusted. Manzambi has one pro season as a starter under his belt -- but it was a lights-out breakout campaign for Freiburg in the Bundesliga at 19. Palacios has been a great-when-he-plays contributor for Bundesliga-winning Leverkusen, and he has 41 Argentina caps -- but he's 27 and hasn't started 20 league games in his entire career. And 24-year-old Gonzalez started 28 games for Pep Guardiola over the past season-and-a-half. They all have clear upside; they all have question marks. But this looks like the going rate for an expected starting midfielder. 25. Loum Tchaouna, right winger, Burnley FC to Coventry City • Transfer fee: €23.00m • Percentage of revenue: 14.38% 24. Konstantinos Tzolakis, goalkeeper, Olympiacos Piraeus to Hull City • Transfer fee: €23.30m • Percentage of revenue: 14.56% 23. Nobel Mendy, center back, Rayo Vallecano to Hull City • Transfer fee: €23.40m • Percentage of revenue: 14.63% Of the promoted teams, Hull have the fewest players on the list: just three. That might be partially due to an over-estimate on their expected revenue, but it's mainly down to their strategy. Rather than going super-big on any one player, they spread the deals around on a number of players. If we look at net-spend for the summer window -- fees paid, minus fees received -- then only six Premier League teams, plus Real Madrid, racked up a bigger deficit this summer. It's a different world, people. 22. Abdul Fatawu, right winger, Leicester City to Ipswich Town • Transfer fee: €23.45m • Percentage of revenue: 14.66% 21. Malick Fofana, left winger, Olympique Lyon to Sunderland • Transfer fee: €30.00m • Percentage of revenue: 15.00% 20. Mateus Fernandes, central midfield, West Ham United to Tottenham Hotspur • Transfer fee: €99.00m • Percentage of revenue: 15.02% 19. Bradley Barcola, left winger, Paris Saint-Germain to Liverpool • Transfer fee: €125.00m • Percentage of revenue: 15.25% This transfer is emblematic of a couple things. The first: how much more money Premier League teams are making. This is the fifth-most expensive transfer in league history, the most expensive move for a player in the French league, and Liverpool's second-most-expensive deal after last summer's acquisition of Alexander Isak. That's a lot to take in, but let's go back a decade. This same transfer, by revenue percentage, would have cost about €60 million. Or about €15 million more than what Liverpool paid to acquire Christian Benteke from Aston Villa 10 summers ago. Given Barcola's higher level of performance at a higher level of competition and his slightly younger age, the numbers start to make a little more sense. But that brings us to the second thing this signing represents: nobody can afford certainty. There's a good chance Barcola is a superstar at Liverpool -- plays the right position, is the right age, has the requisite production -- but there are still a bunch of question marks. His biggest sample size comes in Ligue 1, where he was playing for a team with so much more money than anyone else in the league. He's also managed to rack up a lot of minutes in the Champions League -- nearly 3,000 -- but his production significantly drops from 0.8 goals+assists per 90 minutes in France to 0.53 in Europe. Liverpool learned a similar lesson last summer with the struggles of Florian Wirtz and Isak in their first seasons with the club: superstar money doesn't guarantee superstardom. 18. Sidiki Cherif, center forward, Fenerbahce to Coventry City • Transfer fee: €24.50m • Percentage of revenue: 15.31% 17. Matias Fernandez-Pardo, center forward, LOSC Lille to Newcastle United • Transfer fee: €60.00m • Percentage of revenue: 15.36% 16. Ousmane Diomande, center back, Sporting CP to Nottingham Forest • Transfer fee: €40.00m • Percentage of revenue: 15.66% 15. Carl Rushworth, goalkeeper, Brighton & Hove Albion to Coventry City • Transfer fee: €25.70m • Percentage of revenue: 16.06% 14. Sandro Tonali, defensive midfield, Newcastle United to Tottenham Hotspur • Transfer fee: €108.00m • Percentage of revenue: 16.39% 13. Tarik Muharemovic, center back, Sassuolo to Leeds United • Transfer fee: €37.00m • Percentage of revenue: 16.44% 12. Elliot Anderson, central midfield, Nottingham Forest to Manchester City • Transfer fee: €135.00m • Percentage of revenue: 16.61% 11. Caleb Yirenkyi, central midfield, FC Nordsjaelland to Coventry City • Transfer fee: €27.00m • Percentage of revenue: 16.88% The five Coventry players comprise a full 10% of this list, and they're just one spot behind Hull in the net-spend rankings. But the start of the season couldn't have gone worse for Frank Lampard's team. A home loss to Hull City, combined with Hull's opening-week win against Manchester United and a decent start for Ipswich Town, has already shuffled the relegation odds. According to Simon Grayson's projection model, Coventry are now the most likely team to be sent back down to the Championship. 10. Emersonn, center forward, FC Toulouse to Ipswich Town • Transfer fee: €28.00m • Percentage of revenue: 17.50% 9. Gonzalo García, center forward, Real Madrid to Fulham • Transfer fee: €40.00m • Percentage of revenue: 17.68% 8. Enzo Fernández, central midfield, Chelsea to Manchester City • Transfer fee: €145.00m • Percentage of revenue: 17.84% 7. Julio Enciso, attacking midfield, RC Strasbourg Alsace to Ipswich Town • Transfer fee: €30.50m • Percentage of revenue: 19.06% And then there's Ipswich Town, who have seven players in the top 50 -- more than anyone else. The only teams with a larger net-spend deficit this summer were Liverpool and Tottenham. Put another way, a team called the Tractor Boys spent more on transfer fees than Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Manchester City, Arsenal, and Chelsea. Will it work? We saw a massive summer-spend keep Sunderland up last season, and then Ipswich beat them in their opening match. Enciso, in particular, will be decisive. Through two games, he's leading the club in both expected goals and expected assists. Come the end of the season, I wouldn't be surprised if that's still true. 6. El Hadji Malick Diouf, left back, West Ham United to Brentford • Transfer fee: €40.80m • Percentage of revenue: 19.99% 5. Liam Delap, center forward, Chelsea to Nottingham Forest • Transfer fee: €52.50m • Percentage of revenue: 20.56% Can you ever go wrong signing a young player? I know that sounds vague and pedantic, but Chelsea paid €35.5 million to acquire Delap from Ipswich last summer. He looked like an OK, goals-and-nothing-else center-forward prospect -- 12 goals for a bad team, on 9.34 expected goals -- and then had a terrible year at Chelsea: one goal in over 1,000 Premier League minutes. So what does 0.08 goals per 90 minutes do to your perceived value? It, apparently, increases it by about 17 million Euros. 4. James Trafford, goalkeeper, Manchester City to Leeds United • Transfer fee: €46.70m • Percentage of revenue: 20.76% 3. Luka Vuskovic, center back, Tottenham Hotspur to Brighton & Hove Albion • Transfer fee: €54.00m • Percentage of revenue: 20.86% Any time Brighton spend this much money on a player, my ears perk up. Of course, they've never spent this much money on a player -- Vuskovic is the club-record signing by about €7 million. What intrigues me even more is that it's close to the amount of money they got from Tottenham for the guy Vuskovic is replacing, Jan Paul van Hecke. Then, on top of that, he's only 19, and he plays the outfield position with the latest developing age curve. Given that we know Brighton make all of their decisions using complex projection models and that they are fully aware of their place in the financial hierarchy, then it seems safe to assume the following: perhaps the smartest club in the world is telling us that they think there's a good chance this guy becomes a superstar. 2. Mamadou Sangare, central midfield, RC Lens to Brentford • Transfer fee: €48.00m • Percentage of revenue: 23.52% Sangare already looks like a breakout star. Check out this map of each of his on-ball actions from the stats app Futi. Anything in gray was unsuccessful: What's funny is that the main thing missing is what you might think of as the main thing a midfielder is supposed to do: play passes from the middle of the field. Yet he's doing just about everything else: taking players on, creating chances, generating shots, intercepting passes. And per Futi, he leads all midfielders in balls won by pressing high. Much like with Brighton, Brentford betting big on any player -- Sangare is the club-record signing -- who isn't an attacker tells us something about how one of the savviest teams on the planet thinks the sport works. The most valuable midfielders, they're saying, do most of their most important work outside of the midfield. 1. Morgan Rogers, attacking midfield, Aston Villa to Chelsea • Transfer fee: €138.00m • Percentage of revenue: 24.10% How much longer can Chelsea keep this up? Rogers has looked really good through two matches; he's north of a goal-plus-assist per 90 minutes, and his underlying numbers back it up. He's been devastating out in space on the left side, but check out these two stats: -Chelsea have generated the second-most xG of any team in the league through two matches: 5.17 -Cheslea have the second-smallest share of possession of any team in the league through two matches: 32% This can't continue -- or, at least, we've never seen a team be so dangerous with the ball despite barely ever having the ball. Making it even weirder: their two matches were on the road against Fulham and home against Brighton. It's not like they ripped up Manchester City and Arsenal on the counter. In just two games, we've seen Rogers show the upside Chelsea envisioned when they made a deal of this size. But we've still only seen it amidst a truly bizarre opening pair of matches under coach Xabi Alonso. Something's gotta give, right?