- The summer of ’26 window: the record breakers and clubs running into trouble
- Was this summer’s window a total failure for Arsenal?
- Is it really that difficult for a football club to make a profit?
By Tony Attwood
This week I had my house valued and it is apparently (according to the estate agent) worth over twice as much as it cost me when I bought it from the builders who built it.
This week I also learned from the newspaper I read that there have been almost 1500 transfer deals involving English clubs this summer, and the total amount of money that was pledged was £6.6bn. It hasn’t been paid yet, as transfer sums are paid during the length of the player’s contract, but it has been promised. Which means that most players will be sold before the club finishes paying for him.
I suppose it is a bit like buying a house with a mortgage, you pay off bits of the mortgage month by month but never own the house, for you pay the rest when you sell the house. Except… there is a difference. Most houses go up in value (in the UK at least) while many players go down in value either through age, decline in form, or injury. Not all, but the percentage who increase in value over the years is tiny.
Now the company who has really exploited this is Blueco who own Chelsea FC . In the last four years Chelsea have come 12th, 6th, 4th and 10th, and had an FA Cup and League Cup runners up slot. They have had five managers of the “permanent” variety in those four years. But they’ve made money, because they turn out to be good at buying young players and selling them at a profit. It’s got nothing to do with playing football, but that seems to be how they make their money.
Arsenal on the other hand don’t buy the players the media tell us they are trying to buy, but they won the league last season, and have had a decent start this season. And throughout all of this only 3% of the players mentioned in the media to be on “Arsenal’s radar” as it is sometimes called, actually ended up at the club.
What do we conclude? Chelsea are not a football club but a employment agency. They have made money and come 3rd, 12th, 6th, 4th and 10th in the league in the last five years. And they get away with this because their activities are covered by journalists whose reports get more and more frantic each summer meaning only three in every 100 transfers listed as possible in the media during a window, actually happen.
On the other hand Tottenham go bonkers changing managers, while spending around £200m in the last five years, missed relegation by one place for the last two seasons, are currently bottom of the league again. So we can say, if transfers really worked in improving a club’s performance then we would not see clubs like Tottenham stuck right at the foot of the league.
And indeed in this regard we might consider Sports Mole’s very help analysis of Tottenham’s work this window
- Tottenham total spend summer 2026: £312m
- Tottenham total income summer 2026: £99m
But there is another factor here. Last season Arsenal reached the Champions League final, and won the Premier League by seven points, had by far the best defence in the league, reached the final of the Champions League, and had the second best attack in the league. Yet journalists go on saying that historically Arsenal’s recruitment of players in transfer windows was not up to scratch, and there are all sorts of other players Arsenal should buy.
This does not mean that we should never criticise anything that Arsenal does – of course not. But it does suggest to me that the people who know absolutely nothing about player transfers and who clubs should buy, quite often turn out to be football journalists or if not, they become the people running clubs like Tottenham.
