All the purchases so far: who has done the most business?

By Tony Attwood

The league table of players bought and the money paid has changed quite a lot in the past week as the top five for numbers of players and money spent shows:

Pos	Club	Money Spent	Number of players
1	Manchester City	£172m	4
2	Manchester Utd	£106m	2
3	Everton	£86	10
4	Chelsea	£68.7	4
5	Arsenal	£46	2

Arsenal’s figure and that of Everton are depressed because one of Arsenal’s two signings came as a free because of the end of the contract.   Chelsea have their amount paid reduced because one player is a youth team player who has come on compensation (typically well under £1m) and one as a free agent (meaning of course that he has been released by his last club.)

Liverpool have taken on a released player as well, and as for Everton, half of their ten signings cannot be accounted for financially for one reason or another.

Here’s the updated table…

Club	Player	From	Date	Fee	Total £
Arsenal	Alexandre Lacazett	Lyon	July	£46m	£46m
	Sead Kolasinac	Schalke	June	End of contract
Chelsea	Antonio Rüdiger	Roma	June	£29m	£68.7m
	Ethan Ampadu	Exeter	July	Compensation
	Willey Cabeleero	Free agent	July	£0
	Tiémoué Bakayoko	Monaco	July	£39.7m
Man C	Bernardo Silva	Monaco	July	£43.6	£172.10
	Kyle Walker	Tottenham	July	£50m
	Ederson	Benfica	June	£34.9m
	Bernardo Silva	Monaco	May	£43.6m
Man U	Victor Lindelof	Benfica	June	£31m	£106m
	Romelu Lukaku	Everton	July	£75m
Liverpool	Mohamed Salah	Roma	June	£36.9m	£36.9m
	Dominic Solanke	Chelsea	May	Released
Tottenham					£0
Everton	Michael Keene	Burnley	July	£25m	£86m
	Josh Bowler	QPR	July	Unknown
	Sandro Ramírez	Malaga	July	£5.3m
	Henry Onyekuru	Lupen	June	£7m*
	Nathangelo Markelo	FC Volendam	June	Unknown
	Davy Klaassen	Ajax	June	£23.7m
	Jordan Pickford	Sunderland	June	£25m
	Boris Mathis	Metz	July	Unknown
	Josh Bowler	QPR	July	Unknown
	Wayne Rooney	Man U	July	Free?
Southampton	Jan Bednarek	Lech Poznan	July	£5.7m	£5.7m
Bournemouth	Asmir Begovic	Chelsea	May	£30m	£50m
	Nathan Aké	Chelsea	June	£20m
	Jermain Defoe	Sunderland	June	Free
	Connor Mahoney	Blackburn	July	Released
West Brom	Yuning Zhang	Vitesse Arnhem	July	Undisclosed	£12m
	Ben Pierce	Free Agent	July	Free
	Jay Rodriguez	Southampton	July	£12m

*Player purchased then loaned out.

Tottenham will presumably now start spending money, given that they have sold the player who knocked up the 7th most minutes on the pitch for them in the past season, and thus might be deemed to have had some value to the club.

But what we don’t know, and I think it would be tough to work out ahead of the season itself, is how many players each club has who are ready to step up from the youth team.

For Arsenal we’ve often talked about the number of players in the squad who have come up from the youth team (and I would include Bellerin in such counting, since he came into the youth set up first at a time when Barcelona couldn’t be bothered to continue his education and development).  Add in Coquelin and Iwobi, the Ox, Theo, Martinez… that I suspect is in itself a bigger list than most PL teams have – but I would love someone to do the research for me.

Now looking at the current crop we find Maitland-Niles, Bielik, Bramall, Willock, Nelson, Nketiah, Holding, Chambers, Reine-Adelaide.

So I am not trying to say that all of these guys will make it, nor indeed that other clubs don’t have youngsters coming through the ranks, but the failure over the years of Chelsea to find another John Terry has made me wonder if this ability to bring through youth players should not be counted when we look at transfers.  Is it not a fundamental part of Arsenal?

After all, we don’t need another right back because we have Bellerin.   We don’t need another wing back come central midfielder come winger because we have the Ox.   And I know Theo has been reduced to a squad player, but let us not forget that last season he played in 24 league games and scored 10 goals, which is not a bad return for the money.  Include the Champions League and the FA Cup and it was 19 goals in 33 games.   No wonder the talk is of £30m for the player.

So just as I thought, in starting this column, that buying quickly was neither here nor here, so I am not sure that the number of transfers nor the amount of money paid are quite as indicative as we might think.  But I will keep on tracking these ten clubs (the top ten from last season) through the transfer window just to see what turns up.

Bellerin has already left: pictures. Theo about to go, Giroud going, Jack staying, and the Coquelin error.

Is this the weirdest Arsenal summer ever? Even so the Europa plan sounds fun.