This is not a list of every Premier League side’s five biggest signings ever, but a collection of their five most recent transfer record buys.
And those things are different. So you can delete that comment now and get over yourself.
Arsenal, Burnley and Luton may all welcome new club-record signings soon. No current top-flight side made their most expensive buy longer ago than Man Utd.
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)
Four of those players subsequently left on a free transfer; Nicolas Pepe’s Arsenal contract expires next year. An expensive new midfielder will sadly have arrived by then.
ASTON VILLA
Stewart Downing – £12m (Middlesbrough, July 2009)
Darren Bent – £18m (Sunderland, January 2011)
Wesley Moraes – £22m (Club Brugge, June 2019)
Ollie Watkins – £28m, rising to £33m (Brentford, September 2020)
Emi Buendia – £30m, rising to £38m (Norwich, June 2021)
How bizarre to think that Unai Emery made one Premier League club’s most recent record signing and it wasn’t Aston Villa. For a couple of reasons, that will change this summer.
BOURNEMOUTH
Tyrone Mings – £8m (Ipswich, June 2015)
Benik Afobe – £10m (Wolves, January 2016)
Jordon Ibe – £15m (Liverpool, July 2016)
Nathan Ake – £20m (Chelsea, June 2017)
Jefferson Lerma – £25m (Levante, August 2018)
Bournemouth bid farewell to Jefferson Lerma this summer having almost unseated him as the club’s record signing a few times. Dango Ouattara, Illya Zabarnyi and Hamed Traore all joined for upwards of £20m since January, but don’t quite make the cut.
BRENTFORD
Bryan Mbeumo – £5.85m (Troyes, August 2019)
Ivan Toney – £5m, rising to £10m (Peterborough, September 2020)
Kristoffer Ajer – £13.5m (Celtic, July 2021)
Keane Lewis-Potter – £16m, rising to £20m (Hull, July 2022)
Kevin Schade – £22m (Freiburg, July 2023)
That is pleasingly chronological from Brentford, proof of a club with their ducks in order. One statement signing every summer for the past five years would be even better if the last three end up matching the brilliance of the previous two.
BRIGHTON
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)
Joao Pedro – £30m (Watford, May 2023)
Brilliant as Brighton are, their transfer strength has been in identifying rough diamonds from faraway lands to polish and move on for considerable profit. When spending big they can stumble, which makes Joao Pedro’s impending arrival all the more intriguing.
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)
Vincent Kompany will be desperate to break this particular stranglehold soon, even if just to override the predictability of Burnley having a no-nonsense centre-half and a burly centre-forward share their title of most expensive player ever.
CHELSEA
Alvaro Morata – £58m (Real Madrid, July 2017)
Kepa Arrizabalaga – £71m (Athletic Bilbao, August 2018)
Kai Havertz – £75.8m (Leverkusen, September 2020)
Romelu Lukaku – £97.5m (Inter Milan, August 2021)
Enzo Fernandez – £106.8m (Benfica, February 2023)
There is a genuine case to say Enzo Fernandez is legitimately the best of those Chelsea signings, which reflects well on no-one. But Todd Boehly has continued that proud tradition of general waste.
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)
A ludicrous fact: not a single one of those signings was made by Roy Hodgson. Crystal Palace presumably still regret giving Alan Pardew quite so much cash to spend.
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)
Not sure what to say about that. It would probably make the best five-a-side team of any club on this list.
Pickford Everton© Provided by Football365
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 Michael Seri – £25m (Nice, July 2018)
Fulham do like to use their regular Premier League promotions to open new transfer doors.
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)
It is probably safe to suggest that Darwin Nunez has not activated enough add-ons to become Liverpool’s record signing just yet. That initial £65m fee paid to Benfica can rise as high as £85m, but not with nine Premier League goals.
LUTON
Steve White – £175,000 (December 1979, Bristol Rovers)
Paul Walsh – £400,000 (July 1982, Charlton)
Lars Elstrup – £850,000 (August 1989, Odense)
Simon Sluga – £1.3m (July 2019, HNK Rijeka)
Carlton Morris – £1.7m (July 2022, Barnsley)
Luton Town have been promoted to the Premier League. This is the away end entrance to their stadium. And it is oh so beautiful.
MANCHESTER CITY
Aymeric Laporte – £57.2m (Athletic Bilbao, January 2018)
Riyad Mahrez – £60m (Leicester, July 2018)
Rodri – £62.8m (Atletico Madrid, July 2019)
Ruben Dias – £64.3m (Benfica, September 2020)
Jack Grealish – £100m (Aston Villa, August 2021)
That is an unerringly brilliant record, whether the signings were instantly brilliant or they needed a year of traditional transitional year of Pep seasoning first.
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)
Fair play to Manchester United for accepting that their last two club-record signings were so catastrophic it would be foolish to try again. They have the longest-standing current Premier League transfer record.
NEWCASTLE
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)
Alexander Isak – £58m, rising to £63m (August 2022)
The bad news: Faustino Asprilla (£6.7m, Parma, February 1996) has finally been dislodged from this list. The good news: Eddie Howe can either make very good signings, or make very bad signings look very good.
NOTTINGHAM FOREST
Britt Assombalonga – £5.5m (Peterborough, August 2014)
Joao Carvalho – £13.2m (Benfica, June 2018)
Taiwo Awoniyi – £17.2m (Union Berlin, June 2022)
Emmanuel Dennis – £20m (Watford, August 2022)
Morgan Gibbs-White – £25m, rising to £42.5m (August 2022)
A simply ludicrous first summer in decades as a promoted Premier League club saw Nottingham Forest break their transfer record three separate times, pushing Pierre van Hooijdonk (£4.5m, Celtic, March 1997), Kevin Campbell (£3m, Arsenal, July 1995) and Teddy Sheringham (£2m, Millwall, July 1991) out.
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)
There is a chance that Rhian Brewster could trigger every clause Liverpool inserted into the deal which saw him leave in October 2020 – although that would presumably involve scoring a few actual goals and probably breaking into the England squad.
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)
Again, Richarlison (£50m rising to £60m) is theoretically capable of usurping someone who will unfathomably become his teammate in pre-season, but Ange Postecoglou must coax some undisallowed goals out of the Brazilian first.
WEST HAM
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)
Lucas Paqueta – £51m (Lyon, August 2022)
One or both of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano probably belong here somewhere, but we’ve no sodding idea of their actual fees.
WOLVES
Rui Patricio – £16m (Sporting, June 2018)
Adama Traore – £18m (Middlesbrough, August 2018)
Raul Jimenez – £30m (Benfica, June 2019)
Fabio Silva – £35.6m (Porto, September 2020)
Matheus Nunes – £38m, rising to £42.2m (Sporting, August 2022)
Jorge Mendes is a sod.