Premier league clubs spent a record 950 million transfer fees in 2014/15 to beat last seasons total tally. Despite not making many deals in the winter window, the summer alone was enough for English clubs to break the barrier.
Research from the business advisory firm Deloitte showed that Premier League clubs had spent just £80m going into deadline day on Monday. But, a number of late deals saw a similar spend of £130m to the previous year’s winter window.
Manchester City capturing Wilfried Bony, Chelsea grabbing Juan Cuadrado and Arsenal’s capture of Gabriel Paulista ended the window as the top flight’s highest spenders, grossing around 50% of the total Premier League spend.
The net spend fell well short of the record of 225m set in 2011, when Fernando Torres moved from Liverpool to Chelsea for 50m and Andy Carroll moving to Liverpool from Newcastle United for 35m. Also this year clubs spent more on deadline day (45m), than they did on 2014 deadline day, which saw 35m spend on purchases.
Despite a relatively quiet winter window, Deloitte’s research shows that the 2014-15 season has still been a record year for Premier League transfers. English clubs have spent more than 950m, with Manchester United’s 153m summer spree being a standout figure. This figure beats last season’s record of 760m.
In this January window, the acquisition of new players from overseas clubs accounted for 65m (50%) of Premier League clubs’ gross transfer spending. Followed by acquisitions from fellow Premier League clubs for 55m (42%) and acquisitions from Football League clubs for 10m (8%). In total, Premier League clubs have now spent over 1.3 billion to acquire new players in the 13 January transfer windows between 2003 and 2015.
Top division clubs in Italy are the second-highest gross spenders this January, with total reported transfer spending of around 50% of the Premier League total. Total transfer spending by top division clubs in both Germany and Spain was around 40% of that by Premier League clubs. Meanwhile gross transfer spending by French clubs was around a quarter of that seen at Premier League clubs.