We all know transfer fees in football have risen wildly in recent years, but while some clubs take advantage of that to earn huge amounts of profit, others spend profligately without filling the coffers through sales.
Europe’s big five leagues are home to all of the 10 clubs with the highest net spend – that is a club’s outlay on transfers minus its income from sales – in the world over the past five years. And six of them are from the Premier League.
We’ve taken at each of them and what they’ve got for their money, with figures courtesy of Transfermarkt. Note: the period taken into account is from the start of the 2017 summer window until the end of the 2022 winter window. Transfers already agreed for summer 2022 are not included in the total net spend.
10. Aston Villa – £221.24million
The most surprising inclusion on this list, Villa were still in the Championship for the first two years of this period but under the ownership of Tony Xia and then Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, they have invested heavily, first to make it back to the big time and then to stay there.
The summers and winters of 2019, 2020 and 2021 were lavish, with the likes of Tyrone Mings, Wesley, Ollie Watkins, Emiliano Buendia, Leon Bailey and Danny Ings all arriving for fees in excess of £20million.
They did recoup a whopping £105.75million with the sale of Jack Grealish to Manchester City, but they still beat out fellow Premier League clubs Everton, Newcastle, Liverpool, West Ham and Wolves to make it into the top 10.
This summer they look set to continue that sort of outlay, with the arrivals of Diego Carlos and Philippe Coutinho already confirmed. The pressure will be on Steven Gerrard to turn that spending into results.
9. Barcelona – £225.63million
Barcelona received an astronomical £199.8million from the sale of Neymar to Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2017. And they quickly proceeded to piss it all up the wall.
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