The transfer record progression of every Premier League club

Matt Stead
<> at Wembley Stadium on May 19, 2018 in London, England.

Leeds breaking their 20-year transfer record means Manchester United’s is now the longest-standing in the Premier League.

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)

Tell you what, that would make a bloody good attack in its prime. Willian’s signing-on fee could eclipse all those figures combined.


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ASTON VILLA

Juan Pablo Angel – £9.5m (River Plate, January 2001)

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)

Jim, Stew, Daz and Wes scored 64 goals for Villa between them. Juan Pablo managed 65 on his own. What a divine old chap.

 

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)

That is some wonderfully steady progression from a club whose record signing at the time of their promotion in May 2017 was Shane Duffy for £4m.

 

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)

How incredibly Burnley to ensure the title of record signing is shared between a massive centre-half and a massive striker. One recently broke the club’s record for most goals in a single Premier League season; the other is training with Middlesbrough after playing 90 minutes all campaign, as captain in a League Cup defeat to Sunderland last August.

 

CHELSEA

Michael Essien – £24.4m (Lyon, August 2005)

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)

That is an almost impressively terrible hit rate spread across four managers. Frank Lampard should probably look into spending that kind of money on de-aging Franco Baresi, although playing alongside Antonio Rudiger and Marcos Alonso would undo any progress on that front.

 

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)

Alan Pardew spent more on Christian Benteke than Roy Hodgson has since his appointment as Crystal Palace manager in September 2017 (£25.2m). That is amazing.

 

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)

Carlo Ancelotti has won it all but only ever spent more than Everton’s record transfer fee on three players: Gareth Bale, James Rodriguez and Fernando Torres. That makes sense.

 

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)

Fulham should do one of two things with their transfer budget: mirror their brilliantly lavish summer 2001 spend or give Scott Parker a literal record deal.

 

LEEDS

Tony Yeboah – £3.4m (Eintracht Frankfurt, January 1995)

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)

The oldest top-flight transfer record by almost 16 whole years has been broken. Tony Yeboah (£3.4m, Eintracht Frankfurt, January 1995) is collateral damage to Leeds living the dream again.

 

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)

Shinji Okazaki (£7m) was Leicester’s biggest signing in the summer of 2015. Then they won the sodding Premier League and immediately embraced our capitalist overlords. A real shame.

 

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 is the inverse of Chelsea: four wonderful deals and one dud. Why would Liverpool build around a player as awful as Virgil van Dijk?

 

MANCHESTER CITY

Raheem Sterling – £44m (Liverpool, July 2015)

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)

How far Manchester City have come since Jô (£19m) was their record signing pre-Abu Dhabi United Group. Corinthians, by the way, wearing the number 77 shirt.

 

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)

Jadon Sancho will be sending another message if he is the player to dislodge Rio Ferdinand from this list. That would also mean Manchester United’s five most recent record signings would all have been made by different managers. Justice for David Moyes.

Manchester United now have the oldest club-record transfer in the Premier League.

 

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)

Newcastle record signings are like buses, and often as effective in front of goal.

 

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)

If you can’t enjoy a team breaking their transfer record five separate times upon Premier League promotion, then this sport isn’t for you. It still boggles the mind as to how Sheffield United signed Sander Berge from under the noses of Manchester United.

 

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)

One is the sh*thouse’s sh*thouse. Another is Adel Taarabt’s natural heir. Roberto Soldado scored more goals (11) than all of them combined (8) in 2019/20.

 

WEST BROM

Shane Long – £5m (Reading, August 2011)

Stephane Sessegnon – £6.6m (Sunderland, September 2013)

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

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

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

A Premier League club has Nacer Chadli as their record signing again. What a world. He spent this past season refusing 5am hill runs on loan at Anderlecht from Monaco, and is still only 31.

 

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)

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

 

WOLVES

Helder Costa – £13m (Benfica, January 2017)

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)

There was a time when Ade Akinbiyi (£3.5m) was the record Wolves signing for almost ten full years. Then Kevin Doyle (£6.5m) came along in June 2009. After that came Steven Fletcher (£6.5m) and Ivan Cavaleiro (£7m). Thing have got a little out of hand since.

Matt Stead