The transfer record progression of every Premier League club

Matt Stead

By our count, the three players to appear on this transfer record list more than once are Fernando Torres, Andy Carroll and Rio Ferdinand. Hmm.

 

ARSENAL
Andrei Arshavin – £15m (Zenit St Petersburg, February 2009)

Mesut Ozil – £42.5m (Real Madrid, September 2013)

Alexandre Lacazette – £46.5m (Lyon, July 2017)

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – £55.5m (Borussia Dortmund, January 2018)

Nicolas Pepe – £72m (Lille, August 2019)

Not a single unqualified success among them, which is impressive in a way. Edu has work to do.

 

ASTON VILLA
James Milner – £10m (Newcastle, August 2008)

Stewart Downing – £12m (Middlesbrough, July 2009)

Darren Bent – £18m (Sunderland, January 2011)

Wesley Moraes – £22m (Club Brugge, June 2019)

Ollie Watkins – £28m (Brentford, September 2020)

Jim, Stew, Daz, Wes and Ollie. Decent stag do line-up there. Poor choice of potential destinations, though. Got to be Bruges unless you’re after some Tyne-Tees-Wear convenience.

 

BRIGHTON
Davy Propper – £10m (PSV, August 2017)

Jose Izquierdo – £13.5m (Club Brugge, August 2017)

Jurgen Locadia – £14m (PSV, January 2018)

Alireza Jahanbakhsh – £17m (AZ Alkmaar, July 2018)

Adam Webster – £20m (Bristol City, August 2019)

Bit Flemish. Does Adam Webster have some Eredivisie or Jupiler Pro League experience everyone has collectively managed to overlook?

 

BURNLEY
Steven Defour – £7.3m (Anderlecht, August 2016)

Jeff Hendrick – £10.5m (Derby, August 2016)

Robbie Brady – £13m (Norwich, January 2017)

Chris Wood – £15m (Leeds, August 2017)

Ben Gibson – £15m (Middlesbrough, August 2018)

The takeover should change this but honestly let’s hope not. A centre-half and a centre-forward sharing the title of Burnley’s most expensive player ever just feels right.

 

CHELSEA
Andriy Shevchenko – £30.8m (AC Milan, May 2006)

Fernando Torres – £50m (Liverpool, January 2011)

Alvaro Morata – £58m (Real Madrid, July 2017)

Kepa Arrizabalaga – £71m (Athletic Bilbao, August 2018)

Kai Havertz – £75.8m (Leverkusen, September 2020)

Some reports suggested the Havertz fee did not represent a club record at the time but let’s be clear: Chelsea will be eager to displace Kepa in any possible way they can. So let’s give them a hand. But it’s quite a shame that the current incumbent seems to be going the same troubled way as his four most recent predecessors. The best bit is that those five players were all signed by different managers. What a club.

 

CRYSTAL PALACE
Dwight Gayle – £4.5m (Peterborough, July 2013)

James McArthur – £7m (Wigan, September 2014)

Yohan Cabaye – £10m (PSG, July 2015)

Andros Townsend – £13m (Newcastle, July 2016)

Christian Benteke – £27m (Liverpool, August 2016)

Roy Hodgson has spent £42.2m since his appointment as Crystal Palace manager in September 2017. Alan Pardew’s entire summer 2016 transfer outlay was £51.5m. Glorious.

 

EVERTON
Yakubu Aiyegbini – £11.3m (Middlesbrough, August 2007)

Marouane Fellaini – £15m (Standard Liege, September 2008)

Romelu Lukaku – £28m (Chelsea, July 2014)

Jordan Pickford – £30m (Sunderland, June 2017)

Gylfi Sigurdsson – £45m (Swansea, August 2017)

Only one of these players has irrefutably had an Amazon package delivered to them this past week.

 

FULHAM
Steed Malbranque – £4.5m (Lyon, July 2001)

Edwin van der Sar – £7m (Juventus, August 2001)

Steve Marlet – £11.5m (Lyon, August 2001)

Konstantinos Mitroglou – £12m (Olympiakos, January 2014)

Jean Michaël Seri – £25m (Nice, July 2018)

Not sure Fulham envisaged their record signing making just two League Cup appearances in a season after being omitted from their Premier League squad within two-and-a-half years of him joining. Scandalous, that.

 

LEEDS
Tomas Brolin – £4.5m (Parma, November 1995)

Michael Bridges – £5.6m (Sunderland, July 1999)

Olivier Dacourt – £7.2m (Lens, July 2000)

Rio Ferdinand – £18m (West Ham, November 2000)

Rodrigo – £27m (Valencia, August 2020)

It took 20 months for Leeds to break their transfer record thrice from July 1999. It took 20 years for Leeds to break their transfer record once from November 2000. Even peak Rio Ferdinand might struggle to defend consistently in this side.

 

LEICESTER
Nampalys Mendy – £13m (Nice, July 2016)

Ahmed Musa – £16m (CSKA Moscow, July 2016)

Islam Slimani – £29.7m (Sporting, September 2016)

Ayoze Perez – £30m (Newcastle, July 2019)

Youri Tielemans – £40m (Monaco, July 2019)

They indulged in the summer after winning the Premier League title and during their first summer with Brendan Rodgers in charge. That’s what the smell of trophies and mince will do to you.

 

LIVERPOOL
Fernando Torres – £20.2m (Atletico Madrid, July 2007)

Luis Suarez – £22.7m (Ajax, January 2011)

Andy Carroll – £35m (Newcastle, January 2011)

Mo Salah – £36.9m (Roma, June 2017)

Virgil van Dijk – £75m (Southampton, January 2018)

That really is quite the hit rate. Virgil van Dijk has two more Liverpool goals than Andy Carroll, by the way.

 

MANCHESTER CITY
Kevin de Bruyne – £54m (Wolfsburg, August 2015)

Aymeric Laporte – £57.2m (Athletic Bilbao, January 2018)

Riyad Mahrez – £60m (Leicester, July 2018)

Rodri – £62.8m (Atletico Madrid, July 2019)

Ruben Dias – £64.3m (Benfica, September 2020)

Four of those players, including the one that has left Pep Guardiola stunned, started against Brighton on Wednesday. The other has fallen surprisingly far.

 

MANCHESTER UNITED
Rio Ferdinand – £29.3m (Leeds, July 2002)

Dimitar Berbatov – £30.8m (Tottenham, September 2008)

Juan Mata – £37.1m (Chelsea, January 2014)

Angel di Maria – £59.7m (Real Madrid, August 2014)

Paul Pogba – £89.3m (Juventus, August 2016)

Crystal Palace are the only other Premier League club not to break their transfer record at least once from August 2017 onwards. Not that Manchester United will mind if their current holder leads a title challenge.

 

NEWCASTLE
Faustino Asprilla – £6.7m (Parma, February 1996)

Alan Shearer – £15m (Blackburn, July 1996)

Michael Owen – £16m (Real Madrid, August 2005)

Miguel Almiron – £20m (Atlanta United, January 2019)

Joelinton – £40m (Hoffenheim, July 2019)

The first, third, fourth and fifth entrants have scored 43 goals between them in 223 Premier League games for Newcastle. It took Shearer until half an hour into his 85th top-flight appearance for the Magpies to reach that mark.

 

SHEFFIELD UNITED
Callum Robinson – £7m (Preston, July 2019)

Lys Mousset – £10m (Bournemouth, July 2019)

Oli McBurnie – £20m (Swansea City, August 2019)

Sander Berge – £22m (Genk, January 2020)

Rhian Brewster – £23.5m (Liverpool, October 2020)

Not been afraid to spend, have they? Not that it has yielded a measurable return. Their Premier League goal tallies for the Blades in order: 1, 6, 7, 2, 0.

 

SOUTHAMPTON
Dani Osvaldo – £14.6m (Roma, August 2013)

Sofiane Boufal – £16m (Lille, August 2016)

Mario Lemina – £18.1m (Juventus, August 2017)

Guido Carillo – £19m (Monaco, January 2018)

Danny Ings – £20m (Liverpool, July 2019)

The club famed for providing a conveyor belt of talent for Liverpool finally snapped their underwhelming transfer record streak by signing a player from them. That’s some 200 IQ sh*t.

 

TOTTENHAM
Roberto Soldado – £26m (Valencia, August 2013)

Erik Lamela – £29m (Roma, August 2013)

Moussa Sissoko – £30m (Newcastle, September 2016)

Davinson Sanchez – £42m (Ajax, August 2017)

Tanguy Ndombele – £53.7m (Lyon, July 2019)

When Tanguy Ndombele completes 90 minutes for Tottenham in a Premier League game, we riot. Nice to see him do a John Stones either way.

 

WEST BROM
Brown Ideye – £10m (Dynamo Kiev, July 2014)

Salomon Rondon – £12m (Zenit St Petersburg, August 2015)

Nacer Chadli – £13m (Tottenham, August 2016)

Oliver Burke – £15m (Leipzig, August 2017)

Grady Diangana – £18m (West Ham, September 2020)

Three players no-one would have expected to see on this list; one many – certainly not Mark Noble – may genuinely have forgotten left for big money in the summer; one wonderful striker who is not Mo Salah.

 

WEST HAM
Andy Carroll – £15m (Liverpool, June 2013)

Andre Ayew – £20.7m (Swansea, August 2016)

Marko Arnautovic – £25m (Stoke, August 2017)

Felipe Anderson – £36m (Lazio, July 2018)

Sebastien Haller – £45m (Eintracht Frankfurt, July 2019)

West Ham should stop breaking their transfer record.

 

WOLVES
Ruben Neves – £15.8m (Porto, July 2017)

Rui Patricio – £16m (Sporting, June 2018)

Adama Traore – £18m (Middlesbrough, August 2018)

Raul Jimenez – £30m (Benfica, June 2019)

Fabio Silva – £35.6m (Porto, September 2020)

That stinks of Jorge Mendes, save for the brief sojourn to what is absolutely not north Yorkshire.