Manchester United and Chelsea are both expected to fly through the £200m summer spending mark over the last two days of the transfer window, with Antony and Wesley Fofana set to arrive and perhaps several more. There’s even talk of Frenkie de bloody Jong.
But where will that put them on a list of biggest summer transfer spends ever? Pretty bloody high, as it happens.
Juventus (2018, £212.1m)
It was during Massimiliano Allegri’s first spell that Juventus embarked on a summer transfer spend designed specifically to deliver their first Champions League trophy since 1996. It did not deliver their first Champions League trophy since 1996.
The fate of those players signed in 2018 highlights how The Old Lady might need to improve their approach. Joao Cancelo (£36m) is long gone. Mattia Perin (£10.5m) is their second-choice goalkeeper. Douglas Costa (£35.2m) has a part-time job with LA Galaxy. Leonardo Bonucci (£31.2m) is far from his best. Cristiano Ronalo (£99.2m) stands as one of the worst current club-record signings in all of Europe. The 2015 and 2017 Champions League runners-up have not ventured past the last eight since signing the competition’s greatest player. He has gone but the blockage still remains.
Paris Saint-Germain (2017, £214.4m)
Similar ideas were harboured by Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who a year before had grown tired of monopolising an entire domestic league and sought something far more meaningful than Ligue Un titles won in March by 427 points.
Their answer was simple: to set a bar that might never be raised again. PSG effectively agreed to the two biggest signings in football history in the summer of 2017, Neymar (£200m) stepping out of Lionel Messi’s shadow, while Kylian Mbappe joined on loan from Monaco. That £166m move was only made permanent after PSG did the unthinkable and avoided relegation. Cheltenham Town legend Yuri Berchiche (£14.4m) also moved to the Parc des Princes, because why not when you have already made money seem an entirely worthless concept?
Real Madrid (2009, £219.5m)
Some clubs tend to accept failure about as warmly as a fresh turd on their doorstep. Real Madrid never have dealt all that well with average performance. So when Bernd Schuster and Juande Ramos combined to finish a distant second in La Liga, losing 2-0 and 6-2 to Barcelona while being dumped out of the Champions League last 16 5-0 on aggregate to Liverpool and exiting the Copa del Rey round-of-32 to Real Union, action was…
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