The £116m deal that has blown Premier League transfer window open
The £116m deal that has blown Premier League transfer window open
Tim WigmoreSat, July 25, 2026 at 9:00 AM UTC
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Sandro Tonali (left), Elliot Anderson (centre) and Morgan Rogers (right) have all moved for big money
For English midfielders, it has been a month of record-breaking transfers. Elliot Anderson became the most expensive English footballer in history when he signed for Manchester City for £116m. He has already lost his record: on Tuesday, Morgan Rogers joined Chelsea for £117m.
The deals are best viewed not as separate but intertwined. Anderson’s move from Nottingham Forest has shaped the entire dynamic of this transfer window. In selling Rogers, Aston Villa could point to Anderson’s price as justification for why he should be sold for even more.
“The Elliot Anderson deal has blown the market wide open,” Ben Littlemore, the Premier League market value coordinator for the website Transfermarkt, says. “He is a great player, but was not worth £116m based on the market prior to this summer. A number of top clubs have found it hard to get deals over the line since. Almost every club is pointing to the Anderson deal now in their own valuation.”
Anderson’s move encapsulates the premium that Premier League clubs pay for talent. On average, teams pay 20 to 30 per cent more than what clubs in other leagues pay for talent of a similar quality level, observes Omar Chaudhuri, the chief intelligence officer of Twenty First Group.
This pattern is driven by two factors. Firstly, sellers know Premier League clubs have more cash and price players accordingly. Secondly, clubs are aware of extraordinary revenue cliff-edges around Champions League qualification and relegation; these are bigger than in other major leagues, because the Premier League is wealthier. The upshot, Chaudhuri says, is “there is an incentive to spend more to at least in theory increase your chances of being on the right side of that line”.
The Anderson and Rogers signings also illustrate another major trend: the emphasis upon players already familiar with the Premier League. In 2025, Liverpool spent £100m on Florian Wirtz, Tottenham Hotspur £51.8m on Xavi Simons and Arsenal £55m on Viktor Gyokeres. All signings illustrated the perils of hoping that players will swiftly be able to import their form abroad into the Premier League.
Florian Wirtz had nine goal involvements in the Premier League last season after registering 23 in each of his final two Bundesliga campaigns - Peter Byrne/PA
As the standard has risen relative to rival leagues, and the Premier League has become more physical, so clubs have prioritised spending on players already familiar with the demands of English football. Since 2020, the proportion of transfer spending on players already in the Premier League has soared from 14 per cent to more than 41 per cent so far this summer, Twenty First Group finds.
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Premier League rules on squad composition makeEngland-based players more attractive too. Since 2012, all Premier League sides have been limited to 17 non-home-grown players in their squad, adding to the premium for players who have come through academies.
Transfer fees have risen further because of extra costs that clubs incur signing new players. Since 2012 Premier League clubs have had to pay a transfer levy of 4 per cent when signing a new player, with the money funding the Professional Footballers’ Pension Scheme.
The greater cost is to agents, who receive commission from the buying club on the player’s behalf, separate to the commission that they earn from subsequent contract negotiations. Agents earned a gargantuan £460m from Premier League clubs between February 2025 and 2026; Chelsea alone paid out £65.1m. For players aged 23 and under, there is an extra cost. Fifa’s solidarity mechanism redistributes 5 per cent of an international transfer fee to a player’s youth-training costs, thereby pushing up what selling clubs demand.
Financial sustainability rules have also shaped this year’s market. From this summer, the Premier League’s old profit and sustainability rules (PSR) have been replaced by a new set of squad cost ratio and sustainability and systemic resilience rules. Previously, clubs’ losses were capped at £105m over a rolling three-year period. Now, clubs’ spending on salaries and transfers is capped at 85 per cent of football‑related revenue and net profit.
Under the previous PSR rules, home-grown players, academy graduates and younger players were “strategically more valuable because of the accounting treatment rather than purely footballing reasons”, Rob Wilson, from the University Campus of Football Business, says. Under the new rules, that accounting advantage is reduced: recruitment decisions will be driven more by sporting value than financial engineering, though younger players will remain attractive for their long-term resale value.
Last summer, Premier League teams spent £3.4bn; with five weeks of the transfer window to go, they have already spent £1.4bn. As the Premier League has become more cut-throat, and the financial rewards of making European competitions or simply staying up have increased, so clubs have spent a higher proportion of their revenue on transfers.
From 2018-2021, clubs spent an average of 33 per cent of their revenue on transfers, according to research from Kieran Maguire at the University of Liverpool. From 2022-2025, clubs spent an average of 48 per cent of their revenue on transfers.
This summer’s splurge does not just reflect that clubs have more cash. Premier League teams are also spending the money that they do have in the transfer market more aggressively than ever before.
Source: “AOL Money”
