Premier League Last 5 Seasons Transfer Breakdown (Seasons 2018/19 to 2022/23)
Below is a comprehensive breakdown of every teams transfers over the last 5 seasons including an overview of the Premier League as a whole.
To start off with we have the last 5 years of net spend graphic
With Chelsea topping off the list at £656m overtaking United’s spot. This shows that most of their transfer spending or positive Netspend has come in the 2022/23 season with a transfer Netspend of £548m. Which makes their extravagant spending slightly less crazy
The last 5 years has shown some incredible spending growth. The premier league has become what other European teams have feared. The actual super league.
Above shows the current 20 PL teams have spent near £9bn on players in 5 years.
This years spend of near £3bn has shattered every prior record with the largest being the 2017/18 season at ~1.8bn.
The 2022/23 seasons netspend at £2bn also doubles anything in the past. To give context how crazy the spending is - you could literally delete Chelsea (£608m spending) from the data from the 2022/23 season and it would still shatter any previous transfer spend/netspend.
Above shows the purchases over the last 5 seasons with Chelseas £608m leapfrogging them right to the top at an eyewatering £1.16bn. While the main players are all within £100-200m spending of each other.
However as the netspend chart earlier shows; Chelseas fantastic sales over the last 5 seasons puts them within line of the other big clubs Netspends. Manchester City did over take Chelsea on this chart boosted by their £200m in sales in 2022/23 which shows the transition Manchester City have done from being incredibly bad sellers to absolutely fantastic sellers in a similar model to Chelsea’s prior to this season.
While other clubs like Brighton & Leceister have shown what fantastic recruitment at low prices then selling high can do with both teams sub £100m on the netspend chart.
I expect the 2023/24 transfer spend for premier league teams to heat up even more. Liverpool and Manchester City both have money to burn and holes to fill next season while Arsenal will want to continue to build from a position of strength to add depth and with incoming Champions league revenue their spending will continue. Not to mention players that are already going to be booked on next years tables such as Nkunku to Chelsea or Porro to Spurs. I dont think it will break this years netspend but itll surely get close.
For all this data I have manually collected every PL transfer fee over the last 5 seasons. This was done because websites such as transfmrkt are not the most reliable when it comes to accumulating fees or giving the correct conversion rates.
Once in the sheet you can click the fee which will have a link to a journalist/website telling you the fee per transfer. All fees have add ons inclusive with a separate column to tell you what the add ons where from the source
Which will take you directly to the tweet or article for the fee that was reported on
Now to graphically show every teams transfers over the last 5 years (alphabetically):
Arsenal
Aston Villa
Bournemouth
Brentford
Brighton
Chelsea
Crystal Palace
Everton
Fulham
Leicester City
Leeds United
Liverpool
Manchester City
Manchester United
Newcastle United
Nottingham Forrest
Southampton
Tottenham Hotspurs
West Ham United
Wolverhampton Wanderers
Thanks for reading. I will be doing this thread again in the 2023 Summer window and the 2024 Winter window so keep an eye out. Ill also mix in a few graphical financial threads over the coming weeks.
These do take a lot of time and I would appreciate any subs (its free!) or a follow on twitter