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Premier League clubs have invested more than £3.4bn in players this summer, an increase of 11.9% on last year. There are three aspects of this enormous spending worthy of closer scrutiny.
Priorities on player age have changed
Premier League clubs are spending less on players in the peak 24-27 age band even though those players are increasingly the core of their selections.
As recently as 2021-22, 40% of minutes were taken by players at least 28 years old at the start of the season. That proportion has dropped each year, reaching 26.6% in 2025-26. The reliance on veterans has declined. The bulk of their lost minutes went to players aged between 24 and 27, which is now the dominant age band.
The spend on that key demographic has fallen by 23% since last summer, though. Without Manchester City signing the 25-year-old Enzo Fernández for a British transfer record-equalling £125m shortly before the window closed, the drop would have been even greater.
Younger players account for some of the shortfall but a surprisingly high slice of it has gone towards older footballers. The Premier League has invested £323.3m in players aged at least 28, only around £50m shy of the outlay on this age range in the previous three summers combined (£370.5m). Their proportion of the total has not been as high for four years.
How much this increased spending on veterans affects the playing time figures depends in part on the selection decisions of Mikel Arteta. Arsenal signed two 28-year-olds for a combined £126m: Bruno Guimarães (£75m) and Ezri Konsa (£51m). Transfermarkt considers them to be the most expensive central midfielder and centre-back respectively aged over 27 in history.
The three most expensive Premier League signings of the summer before Fernández, Morgan Rogers, Elliot Anderson and Bradley Barcola, were 23 when their deals were completed. With only slightly less spent collectively on footballers who are 22, clubs have gone hard for players on the verge of entering their peak years rather than those in them.
The Premier League is becoming a closed shop
Perhaps the most notable aspect of transfer spending this summer is how much of it has remained within English football. Fourteen of the 19 signings that cost Premier League clubs at least £50m were made from within the division or from relegated West Ham. Where 30.2% of spending remained in the Premier League in summer 2022, the figure hit 39.3% this year.
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With the combined outlay growing by almost £1.5bn in that period, what appears a relatively small percentage shift becomes a significant figure in the accounts. The squad cost ratio rules are unlikely to stem this flow either, because clubs will be happy to sell for inflated fees which can almost only come from within the division.
Barcola was the oldest of the five costliest signings from overseas, with Matias Fernandez-Pardo and Jérémy Jacquet (aged 21), Johan Manzambi (aged 20) and Ayyoub Bouaddi (aged 18) completing the set. The Premier League is able to retain its top stars, its clubs exchanging them among themselves, while having the funds to hoover up the most exciting young talent from elsewhere.
Squad-building trends may be evolving in the Premier League, but the money is here and a significant portion of it is not going anywhere else. English football is starting to become an enclosed ecosystem.
The rest of Europe cannot keep up
Very few clubs across Europe come close to competing financially. The Premier League features a match this weekend between the top two teams in Europe for net spend and it isn’t Arsenal v Chelsea. Liverpool’s trip to Ipswich takes the honour.
The promoted sides have invested enormous sums to try to be competitive. They have all played League One football within the previous eight seasons, yet Real Madrid are the only club from another country with a higher net spend than Hull or Coventry.
The cream of the Premier League crop can probably only move within England. The transfer fee for Rogers (£117m) or Anderson (£116m) was above the net spend of 75 of the 76 top-flight clubs in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Milan narrowly spent over the cost of Sandro Tonali (£92.5m) net, but no other side beyond Madrid from mainland Europe did. Most non-English sides would have to have a clearout of talent to raise funds for a single elite player from the Premier League, which isn’t practical.
This financial dominance can be seen in continental competitions. Five English clubs have featured in the past eight Champions League finals, as many teams as the rest of Europe has provided in that time. The Premier League has supplied three of the past four Europa League finalists and three of the past four Conference League winners. This is unlikely to change when relegation favourites in England can outspend all but the very richest clubs overseas.
