Every Premier League club’s transfer record progression as Arsenal smash theirs

Matt Stead

Eight record Premier League signings have been broken this summer, with Arsenal the most high-profile.

This is not a list of every Premier League side’s five biggest signings ever, but a collection of their five most recent transfer record buys. And those things are different. So you can delete that comment now and get over yourself…

 

ARSENAL

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)

Declan Rice – £100m plus £5m add-0ns (West Ham, July 2023)

Three of those players subsequently left on a free transfer and there’s little prospect of getting back much of their investment in Nicolas Pepe before his contract expires next year. All the best, Dec. 

 

ASTON VILLA

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

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

Ollie Watkins – £28m, rising to £33m (Brentford, September 2020)

Emi Buendia – £30m, rising to £38m (Norwich, June 2021)

Moussa Diaby – £43.2m, rising to £51.9m (Bayer Leverkusen, July 2023)

Add-ons make things a little murky but the total value of the package to bring in Diaby is in a different ballpark to where Villa usually play.

 

BOURNEMOUTH

Tyrone Mings – £8m (Ipswich, June 2015)

Benik Afobe – £10m (Wolves, January 2016)

Jordon Ibe – £15m (Liverpool, July 2016)

Nathan Ake – £20m (Chelsea, June 2017)

Jefferson Lerma – £25m (Levante, August 2018)

Bournemouth bid farewell to Jefferson Lerma this summer having almost unseated him as the club’s record signing a few times. Dango Ouattara, Illya Zabarnyi, Hamed Traore and Tyler Adams all joined for upwards of £20m since January, but don’t quite make the cut.

 

BRENTFORD

Ivan Toney – £5m, rising to £10m (Peterborough, September 2020)

Kristoffer Ajer – £13.5m (Celtic, July 2021)

Keane Lewis-Potter – £16m, rising to £20m (Hull, July 2022)

Kevin Schade – £22m (Freiburg, July 2023)

Nathan Collins – £23m (Wolves, July 2023)

Breaking your club transfer record to sign Nathan Collins would ordinarily be cause for ridicule but Brentford really do know what they’re doing, even if their list looks a little patchier for the loss of Bryan Mbeumo (£5.85m, Troyes, August 2019).

 

BRIGHTON

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)

Joao Pedro – £30m (Watford, May 2023)

Brilliant as Brighton are, their transfer strength has been in identifying rough diamonds from faraway lands to polish and move on for considerable profit. When spending big they can stumble, which makes Joao Pedro’s arrival all the more intriguing.

 

BURNLEY

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)

Zeki Amdouni – £20m (Basel, July 2023)

It’s a new era at Turf Moor these days under Vincent Kompany and so both goalkeeper James Trafford and goalscorer Amdouni have usurped the shared reign of a no-nonsense centre-half and a burly centre-forward.

 

CHELSEA

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

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

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

Romelu Lukaku – £97.5m (Inter Milan, August 2021)

Enzo Fernandez – £106.8m (Benfica, February 2023)

There is a genuine case to say Enzo Fernandez is legitimately already the best of those Chelsea signings, which reflects well on no-one. But Todd Boehly has continued that proud tradition of general waste.

 

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)

A ludicrous fact: not a single one of those signings was made by Roy Hodgson. Crystal Palace presumably still regret giving Alan Pardew quite so much cash to spend.

 

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)

Not sure what to say about that. It would probably make the best five-a-side team of any club on this list.

Pickford Everton

 

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 Michael Seri – £25m (Nice, July 2018)

Fulham do like to use their regular Premier League promotions to open new transfer doors.

 

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)

It is probably safe to suggest that Darwin Nunez has not activated enough add-ons to become Liverpool’s record signing just yet. That initial £64m fee paid to Benfica can rise as high as £85m, but that is not happening any time soon.

 

LUTON

Simon Sluga – £1.2m (July 2019, HNK Rijeka)

Carlton Morris – £1.3m (July 2022, Barnsley)

Mads Andersen – £3m (July 2023, Barnsley)

Tahith Chong – £4m (July 2023, Birmingham)

Ryan Giles – £5m (July 2023, Wolves)

For almost 30 years, Lars Elstrup reigned as Luton’s record signing; one unexpected promotion later and he has been completely displaced.

 

MANCHESTER CITY

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)

Jack Grealish – £100m (Aston Villa, August 2021)

That is an unerringly brilliant track record, whether the signings were instantly excellent or they needed a year of traditional transitional year of Pep seasoning first.

 

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)

Fair play to Manchester United for accepting that their last two club-record signings were so catastrophic it would be foolish to try again. They have the longest-standing current Premier League transfer record.

 

NEWCASTLE

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)

Alexander Isak – £58m, rising to £63m (August 2022)

The bad news: Faustino Asprilla (£6.7m, Parma, February 1996) has finally been dislodged from this list. Sandro Tonali might have made it but Newcastle want it known they paid £52million plus add-ons. 

 

NOTTINGHAM FOREST

Joao Carvalho – £13.2m (Benfica, June 2018)

Taiwo Awoniyi – £17.2m (Union Berlin, June 2022)

Emmanuel Dennis – £20m (Watford, August 2022)

Morgan Gibbs-White – £25m, rising to £42.5m (August 2022)

Ibrahim Sangare – £30m (August 2023)

A simply ludicrous first summer in decades as a promoted Premier League club saw Nottingham Forest break their transfer record three separate times, pushing Pierre van Hooijdonk (£4.5m, Celtic, March 1997), Kevin Campbell (£3m, Arsenal, July 1995) and Teddy Sheringham (£2m, Millwall, July 1991) out. And 2023 brought a zillion more signings including Sangare.

 

SHEFFIELD UNITED

Luke Freeman – £5m (QPR, July 2019)

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)

The Blades signed Rhian Brewster in a deal worth up to £23.5m in October 2020, but it seems unlikely that initial fee of £19m has been meaningfully lifted by five goals in 63 games, nor that Liverpool have been tempted into triggering his buy-back clause.

 

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)

Again, Richarlison (£50m rising to £60m) is theoretically capable of usurping Ndombele, but Ange Postecoglou must coax some undisallowed goals out of the Brazilian first.

 

WEST HAM

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)

Lucas Paqueta – £51m (Lyon, August 2022)

One or both of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano probably belong here somewhere, but we’ve no idea of their actual fees.

 

WOLVES

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

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

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

Matheus Nunes – £38m, rising to £42.2m (Sporting, August 2022)

Matheus Cunha – £44m (Atletico Madrid, July 2023)

Jorge Mendes is a sod.

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