Tottenham Hotspur were the only top-flight club to make a profit from their transfer dealings over the last two windows. Mauricio Pochettino managed to bank £6.7m while taking his team to third place in the Premier League and automatic Champions League qualification.
A string of sales last summer was led by Paulinho’s £9.9m move to Guangzhou Evergrande. Lewis Holtby, Étienne Capoue, Roberto Soldado, Vlad Chiriches, Aaron Lennon and Benjamin Stambouli also left the club, while there was only a modest outlay on players such as Toby Alderweireld and Son Heung-min.
Manchester City, whose signings included Raheem Sterling, Nicolás Otamendi and Kevin De Bruyne, were by some margin the biggest net spenders. Their outlay of £124.4m comfortably exceeded the combined total of the rest of the Premier League’s top nine but they finished the season in fourth, two places worse off than last year, with 13 fewer points.
City spent £1.88m per point, considerably less than the least efficient top-flight spendthrifts, Newcastle United, whose £80m outlay brought them 37 points – at £2.16m per point or £8.89m per win – 18th place and relegation to the Championship. Spurs, by contrast, made just under £96,000 for each point they won.
Leicester City’s £28.9m spend was less than six other top-flight teams, with those high spenders including three of the bottom four. Eight of the 10 bottom-half sides spent more than second-placed Arsenal whose recruitment drive cost £15.6m and sparked supporter discontent.
The figures show there is no correlation between spending on transfers and sporting achievement. Newcastle proved it was possible to spend a lot of money and go down while Aston Villa – net spend £9.3m – demonstrated the less surprising feat of getting relegated on the cheap.
They were the only one of the five lowest spenders to finish outside the division’s top 12, with Southampton (£4.8m), Swansea (£5m) and Chelsea (£7.8m) also keeping a tight control on their purse strings.
The need for teams promoted from the Championship to invest heavily in their squad is demonstrated in the final positions of Watford, Bournemouth and Norwich City, the three sides that joined the top flight at the start of the season.
Watford spent the most – £42.5m – and finished highest, in 13th; Bournemouth spent £38.7m and finished three places further back; Norwich spent the least, £27.1m, and were relegated in 19th place.
