By Andrew Warshaw
September 3 – Despite UEFA’s financial fair play regulations, English Premier League clubs spent a record £630 million in the summer transfer window that slammed shut on Monday, according to Deloitte’s Sports Business Group. The new tally easily beat the previous record of £500 million set back in 2008, with clubs able to take advantage of the Premier League’s massive television deal without which spending would have been far lower.
The biggest signing was the £42.5 million Arsenal paid Real Madrid for Germany’s exciting international midfielder Mesut Ozil, shattering their previous record fee. Ozil is the second most expensive purchase in English football history, after £50 million Fernando Torres.
Manchester United left it late on the final day of the window but eventually captured Belgian star Marouane Fellaini for £27.5 million from Everton while Liverpool signed central defenders Mamadou Sakho and Tiago Ilori from Paris St Germain and Sporting Lisbon respectively for a combined fee of £25 million and took Nigeria winger Victor Moses on a season-long loan from Chelsea
“The story of this summer transfer window is of new records: a new record for Premier League spending as well as a new world transfer record fee,” said Dan Jones of Deloitte.
The key reason English clubs were able to find so much more money than their rivals is because of their latest three-year TV agreements. From this season, clubs in the Premier League will start to benefit from the new eye-watering £5.5 billion deal for domestic and overseas TV rights.
“Testament to the impact this is having is in the scale of Premier League gross spending, as well as the gulf in net spending between the Premier League and other European leagues,” said Alex Thorpe, another Deloitte expert.
“Whereas many clubs around Europe have been reliant on selling players in order to spend, the financial advantages Premier League clubs enjoy has enabled net spending of £400 million across the league.”
Yet although they could not match the Premier League, spending in other major European leagues also rose. La Liga and Serie A each had gross spending of £335 million, followed by Ligue 1 in France with £315 million and Germany’s Bundesliga with £230 million.
The big-money English arrivals followed hot on the heels of Gareth Bale’s world record €100 million move the other way, from Tottenham Hotspur to Real Madrid.
The Welshman seemed slightly overawed as he received a terrific welcome when paraded in front of about 20,000 Real fans before holding his first news conference as a Madrid player following what he described as his “dream” move and a chance to play alongside Cristiano Ronaldo.
Earlier in the summer, of course, there were other standout deals, not least Neymar’s move from Santos to Barcelona to partner Lionel Messi while Mario Goetze swapped Borussia Dortmund for Bayern Munich and Qatar-backed Paris St. Germain grabbed Edinson Cavani from Napoli for $84 millin, a fee second only to the Bale transfer in the entire summer window.
Contact the writer of this story at andrew.warshaw@insideworldfootballcom