£1.4bn cash splash by elite clubs

PREMIER League clubs spent a record £1.4billion on players this summer, including an unprecedented £210million on transfer deadline day, according to football finance experts Deloitte.

This late flurry of spending took the league’s overall outlay on players since the first transfer window in January 2003 past £10bn.

The total summer spend in England’s top flight was up 23% on last year’s record figure, which is already a record amount for a single season and a new milestone for a calendar year.

But with several major transfers falling through at the 11th hour on Thursday, the league’s net spend was £20m less than last summer’s record of £685m.

Despite that slight dip in net spend, the clubs combined to shell out an estimated 31% of their revenues for this season, a significant rise on the average summer window spending-torevenue ratio of 22%.

Commenting on the numbers, Deloitte’s Dan Jones said: “Premier League clubs have broken their own record for transfer expenditure for the sixth summer in a row.

“With the continued growth in clubs’ revenues, principally from broadcast rights, it is no surprise that Premier League clubs have continued to maintain their leading position in the world’s player transfer market.

“Importantly, and when analysed in the context of generating record broadcast, commercial and match-day revenues, Premier League clubs are spending well within their means.

“For the last 15 years, annual transfer spending has remained within the range of between a fifth and a third, and averaged at around a quarter, of total revenues.

“With Premier League clubs’ revenue showing no sign of decreasing in the foreseeable future, we would expect to see spending continue to rise.”

Despite Paris Saint-German splashing a world-record £200m on Neymar, the Premier League kept its position as Europe’s biggest spender, investing almost twice as much as second-placed Serie A, which paid out £735m on playing talent.

In fact, the combined spend of clubs from Ligue 1, the Bundesliga and La Liga is only £170m more than the Premier League’s total.