Top 10 Premier League virgins we’re excited to see, signed for £252.2m and featuring no Chelsea players
A Crystal Palace freebie, West Ham’s post-Moyes treat and a former Arsenal wonderkid are waiting to make their Premier League career debuts this season.
If someone isn’t named here, it’s because a) they’ve played in the Premier League before and you have quite embarrassingly forgotten, or b) they are rubbish.
10) Daichi Kamada
A Europa League winner under Oliver Glasner, the hope will be that Kamada can pick up at Crystal Palace where he left off as one of the Austrian’s most trusted and reliably productive players during their time together at Eintracht Frankfurt.
There is an exciting foundation in place at Selhurst Park and the capture of Kamada as a free agent was yet another sign of a club operating at its efficient, methodical, sensible best.
The Japan international, who impressed at the 2022 World Cup, has plenty of Premier League pedigree without ever making an appearance in it: Kamada has scored against West Ham and Spurs before, while netting the two goals which forced Arsenal to sack Unai Emery. Both manager and club owe him.
MORE TRANSFER FUN FROM F365
👉 All the Premier League completed summer transfers in one place
👉 The 20 best footballers available on a free transfer right now, with Pepe taken off market
9) Jacob Greaves
There was one glaring omission from the ‘leak’ of an apparent actual transfer shortlist compiled by Ipswich this summer: Premier League experience. At no point was the need for such a quality outlined and that is evident in their incomings.
In terms of new Ipswich signings, free agent Ben Johnson accounts for 69 of their combined English top-flight career league appearances, with Omari Hutchinson, Liam Delap, Aro Muric and Conor Townsend sharing 38 more between them.
Jacob Greaves is the only new addition yet to feature in the Premier League and perhaps that makes his capture most intriguing. That dossier was headed by the requirement for a ‘composed, technically good, athletic and intelligent’ centre-half with ‘good size’ and ‘good reading of the game’. Ipswich spent £18m on Hull’s Player of the Year in the knowledge he ticks each box comfortably.
8) Savinho
The circumstances behind Savio’s move to Manchester City are murky. Sold to the City Group in 2022 and allocated to Troyes, he enjoyed a breakthrough season in 2023/24 and was rewarded with a move to the Premier League champions. But Savinho never featured for the French club, who have been relegated twice since the Brazilian winger became their record signing.
One can only imagine the contrived seriousness with which Pep Guardiola will greet inevitable questions about the multi-club ownership poster boy, who can hardly be blamed for using his Girona platform to enhance his career prospects.
And the point is that Savinho would not have had the opportunity to be fast-tracked to the top of the CFG food chain if he wasn’t good enough. Eleven goals and ten assists in Spain last season suggests there is more than enough individual quality that Guardiola can relentlessly coach out to mould another width-holding backwards-pass merchant.
7) Luis Guilherme
Nothing quite says ‘David Moyes is no longer our manager’ more than spending £25m on a teenager with 45 senior career appearances, who has never played outside of Brazil and cannot speak English.
Those traits quite obviously appealed to Chelsea but the Hammers also had to resist interest from Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Liverpool in a prodigious attacking midfielder who is expected to challenge for the first team immediately instead of being asked to watch hours of Michail Antonio tapes.
Niclas Fullkrug is pure Moyes but still an absolutely intoxicating thought. This is the Tim Steidten and Julen Lopetegui era and Guilherme’s signing is the clearest of indications.
6) Jake O’Brien
Only Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool conceded fewer Premier League goals than Everton last season, so of course Sean Dyche has paired his £80m-rated 6ft 5ins centre-half with someone even taller, purchased for the highest up-front fee of his entire managerial career.
It was thought that the capture of Jake O’Brien from Lyon offered some sort of clue as to the future of Jarrad Branthwaite, yet Everton’s stated aim is to pair them together rather than have the former immediately replace the latter, with James Tarkowski the grand master of blocks and clearances.
O’Brien’s professional career consists of precisely 100 games for club and country but such inexperience should not require a period of acclimation. He spent two-and-a-half years at Crystal Palace before joining Lyon without ever actually playing for the Eagles.
5) Stephy Mavididi
Leicester’s playing squad did not undergo a significant transformation in their solitary season outside of the Premier League but there are elements of novelty and intrigue accompanying Jamie Vardy on his return. He will hope Mavididi and Abdul Fatawu do a fair bit of the running in that forward line when called upon.
Neither have ever played in the Premier League. That is less surprising with Fatawu, the 20-year-old plucked from Ghana by Sporting and then shifted on to Leicester after an initial loan. But Mavididi has attracted prior interest from Newcastle and might have been expected to pick up at least some cursory minutes in eight years on the books at Arsenal.
The 26-year-old instead turned things around by becoming the record English appearance maker in Ligue Un before contributing 13 goals and six assists to the Leicester cause last season, making his “dream to play in the Premier League” an almost certain reality.
4) Leny Yoro
The anticipation has been dulled somewhat by an injury requiring surgery and a rehabilitation period of around three months but Yoro remains the biggest signing of the entire summer 2024 transfer window, a defender coveted by Real Madrid and Liverpool and likened to the version of Rio Ferdinand that was really good at football, rather than the deeply regrettable Ballon d’Or-obsessed pundit iteration.
He is the INEOS statement signing, albeit with a slight delay. And it is obviously nailed on that he gets bullied by Rodrigo Muniz and Jean-Philippe Mateta over the course of a chastening Welcome To The Premier League week in the winter.
3) Archie Gray
Before this summer, Tottenham had signed two 18 year olds from Leeds. Their paths in north London could not have been more polarised: Aaron Lennon was an undoubted success but Jack Clarke simply did not fit.
The hope will be that Gray can avoid those pitfalls and far surpass the levels of both.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect in his move is where he will actually play. Most often a central midfielder, the England youth international also excels at right-back and has impressed at centre-half in pre-season. As the jewel in the crown of Tottenham’s push towards recruiting the finest young talents in world football, it seems likely Ange Postecoglou will trust him to play somewhere.
2) Yankuba Minteh
In 54 club games as a professional, Minteh has scored 15 goals, assisted 12 and never once played for the club who sold him for £30m. Newcastle will consider that a testament to the recruitment team which unearthed the winger, even if it turns out Brighton have struck gold.
The assumption tends to be that when the Seagulls follow a transfer, it is because they think a potential fortune to be flipped and sold to Chelsea will be thrown into the sea. But their record in terms of big-money signings is relatively poor; while Joao Pedro fared well enough last season, their other big-money signings – Your Carlos Balebas, Your Enock Mwepus, Your Alireza Jahanbakhshs – usually range from middling to poor.
Minteh fits the typical Brighton mould of a rough gem waiting to be polished, but his fee changes the dynamic somewhat and adds an element of risk while removing the virtue of patience.
1) Riccardo Calafiori
The end game of fielding an entire team of centre-halves before unmasking to reveal he was Tony Pulis all along has edged closer for Mikel Arteta. Only three clubs in Europe’s top five leagues conceded fewer goals than Arsenal last season and Calafiori will aim to lower that bar further.
His appeal to this side is obvious: a physical, aggressive defender who is confident and progressive on the ball, having started out as a left-back before being used more centrally to immense effect by Thiago Motta and Bologna last season. Calafiori should ultimately provide balance, giving Arteta the mirror of Benjamin White he so craves.
But really, we just want to see those flowing locks every week.
READ NEXT: Arsenal could make ‘unprecedented’ signing after ‘perennial also-rans’ had transfer plans ruined
