The transfer window has slammed shut and the overwhelming feeling at the conclusion of another absurd summer is apathy, ironic given that the feeding frenzy has never been more alarming.
It was only four years ago that the Premier League was spending on average £1.4 billion in the summer transfer window, a figure that although extraordinary had held steady over several years and was broadly aligned with the TV revenue. This summer the record-breaking outlay was £3.49 billion.
It isn’t just the raw numbers that have spiralled out of control. The self-imposed financial regulations that encourage accounting tricks, namely to spread costs over several years while banking sales in one lump sum, have dramatically increased the number of sales between Premier League clubs for potentially inflated fees.
Worse, these are being done largely on credit, as revealed by The Independent this week, potentially creating a bubble similar to the sub-prime mortgage disaster, not least because the volatility in the credit industry is entirely outside of football’s control.
But the sheer scale of the spend, the complexity of the accounting, and, frankly, the meh nature of the players moving for such high fees has created an appetite for the news that is in inverse proportion to the newsworthiness of the deals.
An unserious window should be taken very seriously.
Not that there is anything we can do about it. Not that we can even truly understand it, nor predict the endgame any better than the billionaires banking on an ever-inflating market and the cultural capital of owning Premier League football clubs.
Instead, we may as well kick back and enjoy it for its absurdity.
There is an essential silliness to the 2026 window, a sense of money wasted perhaps like never before, and at the pinnacle of the new trend is of course Tottenham Hotspur, who have almost exclusively signed ‘Spursy’ players; creative types who show quality in flashes but are prone to drifting about aimlessly through winter.
The value of the nine new signings is, at most, half the £350 million they paid. This will not end well.
The other great losers of the window are probably Liverpool, who failed to sign a number six or cover in the full-back positions to leave a hopelessly attack-minded team with virtually no right flank to speak of.
Manchester United were arguably just as poor, unable to sign a left-back or centre-back and betting the house on three central midfield signings nobody else at the top end was interested in (and with good reason).
In fact, for all the money spent it is another surreal note of the window that every Big Six club failed to complete their mission. Arsenal did not get the difference-maker forward. Chelsea lost Enzo Fernandez and never replaced him. Manchester City still don’t really have a full-back.
Outside the Big Six it was pure carnage. Aston Villa and Newcastle have essentially had to rebuild their teams from scratch although both have signed remarkably well, and of greater interest in these salad days for schadenfreude are the clubs who spent wildly but don’t appear to have got much better.
Indeed the defining feature of the times is a £30 million forward you’ve never heard of being announced by a bottom-half club to no fanfare at all.
Deals that were done five years ago for £10 million are now £30 million. The £30 million are now £65 million. None of it makes sense.
Yet those who decided to wait for value arguably lost out the most. Fulham almost exclusively bought Real Madrid reserve players and now look like the least well-equipped, with Crystal Palace and Bournemouth also seeming short for their respective new eras.
Then there are the three promoted clubs, who all did a Sunderland and went wild, to which we can only shrug in disbelief.
It’s hard to say if anyone in the bottom half has really had a ‘bad’ window when value ceases to hold meaning. The quality of player moving into or within the Premier League has not gone up in the last five years. All that has changed is the number attached to them. Apathy is the natural reaction.
And the most natural conclusion to the circus is the most unnatural of clubs, Chelsea, emerging from the mess they began a half-decade ago as probably our transfer window victors.
They predicted hyper-inflation would happen and are duly making profits on all those stockpiled players, from Liam Delap to Andrey Santos to Nicolas Jackson. Credit to their owners for starting a market they now master.
It’s a system they have finally tweaked, allowing Xabi Alonso to sign over-30s, and with Emiliano Martinez he appears to have all-but completed the building of a squad ready to challenge for honours.
Chelsea could be the only real winners here, which would be a fitting twist as Premier League finances balloon out of control – until, that is, the market crashes and the whole thing burns to the ground.
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