With Kalvin Phillips on his way to Manchester City, Raheem Sterling apparently set for Chelsea and the Brazilian trio of Raphinha, Richarlison and Gabriel Jesus all at various stages of progress on their own much-touted moves this looks like being a bumper summer for big-money intra-Premier League transfers.
But how have previous such moves worked out for the players involved? We’ve ranked every previous such move between Premier League clubs and set an entirely arbitrary ‘big-money’ benchmark of £40m and then inevitably had to guess in the margins because undisclosed fees are the scourge of the industry and more importantly this kind of feature.
Ultimately, though, this doesn’t matter too much here because we’re ranking the success of the move rather than the size of the fee, which is but one small factor in our very scientific (ahem) calculations and we have to cut things off somewhere. Got it? Grand, let’s crack on.
15) Gylfi Sigurdsson (Swansea to Everton, August 2017, £45m)
Was quite good but never really £45m good for Everton and then <redacted>.
14) Nathan Ake (Bournemouth to Manchester City, August 2020, £41m)
Might actually have been a smidge under £40m, it depends which reported fee you choose to believe and probably involves a bit of exchange-rate chicanery to sneak it over the £40m cut-off, but we’ve done so as a reminder that even City can get this wrong because, as you’ll see later on in this list, they generally get this quite sickeningly right. Sure, City’s detractors may have a point when complaining that they get to play the game on easy mode but their hit rate when spending £40m-£60m on a footballer is absurdly high. So, with all due respect to the Dutch centre-back, let us revel in this one that went so horribly wrong that he did an adequate job when called upon, allowing City to recoup pretty close to what they spent on him should they decide to cash in and sell him to any one of four or five Premier League suitors. Damn you, City!
13) Romelu Lukaku (Everton to Manchester United, July 2017, £75m)
Now only his second most disastrous and eye-wateringly expensive move to a Premier League club so that’s…something. His numbers at United really weren’t all that bad – especially in light of his struggles last season at Chelsea – but he never truly seemed settled at United, especially once Jose Mourinho had made way for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Managed 16 Premier League goals in his first season and…
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