Every time a Premier League club has spent more than £200m in a transfer window

On only ten occasions has a Premier League team spent more than £200m in a single transfer window. Chelsea are responsible for half of those crazy sprees.

Arsenal (2023, £201.2m)
To mark their emergence as a title-challenging side, Arsenal sought to throw their weight around in an attempt to close that increasingly small gap to Manchester City. They had spent vast sums in assembling that side but knew the next step was big money for fewer players. Declan Rice was a record signing at what might eventually be £105m, with neither Kai Havertz (£65m) nor Jurrien Timber (£34.3m) coming particularly cheap. And the gap to City did shut, but only from five points to two.

MORE DEADLINE DAY FEATURES FROM F365
👉 The biggest summer deadline day signings ever features disastrous Man Utd, Manchester City and Chelsea deals
👉 The most momentous transfer deadline day deals, including Arsenal and West Ham signings

Manchester United (2022, £205.1m)
Manchester United were left pinching pennies for Jonny Evans, Sergio Reguilon and Sofyan Amrabat in 2023 because of a summer of extravagance a year before. With Erik ten Hag on board there was some decent business done before the season started, as Lisandro Martinez (£46.7m), Tyrell Malacia (£12.9m) and Christian Eriksen (free) all joined the revolution. As did Tom Huddlestone but that’s by the by.

Consecutive defeats to Brighton and Brentford forced Manchester United’s hand further and Casemiro (£60m) was drafted in, before Antony (£85.5m) was signed for a veritable fortune on deadline day after an entire window was spent trying to haggle an uninterested Ajax down to around half that.

Manchester City (2023, £206.32m)
There was a time when it looked as though Pep Guardiola had entirely chuffed it in the summer 2023 window. Matheus Nunes (£53m) remains a dreadful fit but Mateo Kovacic (£25m), Josko Gvardiol (£77.6m) and Jeremy Doku (£55.5m) overcame initial struggles to prove their worth.

Tottenham (2023, £212.8m)
With Harry Kane money burning a hole in Daniel Levy’s back pocket, Spurs already had a head start on their spend when loan moves for Dejan Kulusevski and Pedro Porro were automatically made permanent. The start of the Ange Postecoglou revolution necessitated a squad overhaul which also took in Brennan Johnson, James Maddison and Micky van de Ven for considerable fees.

Chelsea (2020, £222.48m)
This splurge, coming as it did immediately after Chelsea served a two-window transfer ban for irregularities regarding youth signings – which is now their entire philosophy under Todd Boehly – eventually and very possibly accidentally delivered the Champions League title. Frank Lampard spent a fortune on Kai Havertz (£72m), Timo Werner (£47.7m), Ben Chilwell (£45m), Hakim Ziyech (£36m) and Edouard Mendy (£21.6m) but it was Thomas Tuchel who knitted it all together. And only one of those players is still actually at the club. They inevitably want to sell him.

Chelsea (2024, ongoing, £223.6m)
Enzo Maresca will tell you this is all absolutely fine. It started with the quite ridiculous £19m thrown in Aston Villa’s direction for Omari Kellyman and has thus far ended with £44.5m spent on Joao Felix, a player Chelsea already borrowed at great cost to discover they had a few hundred different versions of him littered throughout the squad.

The Blues have spent more than £200m in four of the last five transfer windows, and still do not have a properly good keeper or striker. It is an art form at this stage.

Brighton have spent £192.4m this summer. Fabian Hurzeler needs to grow up, unearth a rough diamond no-one has ever heard of, polish them up real nice and push the Seagulls over this arbitrary line.

Manchester City (2017, £223.65m)
Until Todd Boehly came along, no Premier League club had ever spent more in a single transfer window than Manchester City. They held the overall global record for a time after a season of Aleksandar Kolarov, Gael Clichy and Jesus Navas proved to be Guardiola’s limit and the chequebook was dusted off.

Bernardo Silva (£43m) signed with the season barely over; Ederson (£34.7m), Kyle Walker (£50m), Benjamin Mendy (£52m) and Danilo (£26.5m) soon followed.

With a few smaller deals dotted around elsewhere, City made their intent clear. And disappointing third to Chelsea and Tottenham became dominant first over everyone as they embarked on the finest season in Premier League history to reclaim their title and start a dynasty.

Chelsea (2022, £242.18m)
‘Chelsea are doomed as soon as Roman Abramovich tires of his plaything.’ It was a sentiment shared frequently for almost two decades, yet one Boehly immediately proved to be entirely misguided, at least in the sense of them unfalteringly spending a metric arseload. As soon as his £4.25bn takeover of the Blues was ratified the American set about snapping up any relatively young player he could on 427-year contracts.

They were awful close to fielding a whole new (and still quite bad) starting XI by the end: Slonina; Cucurella, Koulibaly, Fofana; Chukwuemeka, Zakaria, Hutchinson, Casadei; Sterling, Aubameyang. Two years later, four of those players are no longer at the club, one is on loan in England’s third tier and at least another is being publicly but still unsuccessfully pushed out.

Chelsea (January 2023, £286.6m)
And that is without including either the £9.7m loan fee paid for Joao Felix, or the ambitious £26.5m in add-ons in the deal to sign Mykhaylo Mudryk. David Datro Fofana (£10.5m) and Andrey Santos (£18m) have been on five loans each between them, while Enzo Fernandez has been made captain seemingly only because he once cost a British record fee.

Chelsea (2023, £397.2m)
He did not hold onto that title for long, of course, replaced by midfield partner Moises Caicedo in The Great Panicked Hijack window of summer 2023. Chelsea signed a dozen players, eight of whom cost at least £20m, with £40m the minimum spent on half of those.

They did make more than £200m through player sales to fund it all, as well as selling a couple of hotels. And when those signings eventually read the small print and realise they have signed the rights of the next five generations of their family over to Clearlake then it will all be too late anyway.

READ NEXT: Twenty biggest transfers in the world in 2024 summer transfer window