Spending records smashed in winter transfer window
The British transfer record was smashed on deadline day as an unprecedented January transfer window ended with Premier League clubs having spent £2.8bn during the 2022- 23 season.
Chelsea’s 121m euro (£107m) deal for Benfica’s Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernandez—once confirmed—will take the total expenditure by top-flight clubs in January to a record-breaking £815m.
More than £275m was spent on deadline day alone before the window closed for English clubs on Tuesday.
The deadline day outlay was an increase of 83 percent on the previous January record of £150m, set in 2018.
And, while an all-time high season expenditure across both the summer and winter windows was guaranteed after a record of £1.9bn was set in September, the final total is double the previous record of £1.4bn in 2017.
The 2018 winter record spend of £430m by Premier League clubs had also already been smashed prior to Tuesday’s deadline day, with the eventual total in 2023 an increase of 90 percent on that—and almost triple the previous January window (£295m), according to financial services firm Deloitte.
The Premier League’s financial dominance in Europe increased to the highest proportion ever reported, as the spending by English top-flight clubs accounted for 79 percent of the total across Europe’s ‘big five’ football leagues, where January spending fell by 35 percent from 2022 to €255m (£225m).
Indeed, Chelsea spent more in January— around £288m—than the combined total of all clubs in the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1.
Among English Football League clubs, spending rose to £25m, up from £20m in the previous winter window.—BBC
