After a landmark season in which two clubs were dragged into a relegation battle due to financial rules, Premier League clubs have reined in spending in the latest transfer window. A new study shows that the net spend was still in the red, the English top-flight reduced its collective summer spending by more than €500 million year-on-year.

Ahead of a long and arduous season, recent history has seen football clubs peg their hopes on increasingly eratic transfer campaigns. Fuelled a continued boom in broadcast revenues, the going rate for prospective players has inflated exponentially over the last decade – with the record fee climbing from 2001’s £46.6 million paid by Real Madrid for Zinedine Zidane to £200 million paid by Paris Saint Germain for Neymar in 2017. While it has been seven years since that record was broken, general fees have continued to explode. In 1996, £15 million would buy you Alan Shearer. Now it would not even buy you half a Joshua Zirkzee – who cost Manchester United £36.5 million.

However, things are beginning to change, if the latest season of transfer fees are anything to go by. The gravy train of broadcasting rights has slowed – something which began before the Covid-19 pandemic, but has been felt much more keenly in its wake. The English Premier League alone has taken in £1.48 billion on an annual basis, but has been stagnating at this level for three cycles now, which is a common pattern amongst all leagues.

At the same time, the Premier League – which has led the spending in transfer windows for many years now – has implemented new rules on profit and sustainability (PSR), which allow clubs to lose £105 million over the course of three seasons, or £35 million per season, on a rolling basis. In the last season, this saw Everton and Nottingham Forest hit with points deductions for what was seen as unsustainable spending, and left them embroiled in relegation battles they would otherwise have been comfortably clear of.

For the 2024/24 season, this means that Premier League clubs have scaled back spending. According to new analysis from Football Benchmark, in the summer of the 2023/24 season, the English Premier League posted staggering net spends of €-1.27 billion. This year, they saw that balance shift notably, with Premier League clubs improving their transfer balance by over €550 million to €-716.2 million.

The researchers noted, “Of course, with transfer expenses totaling €2.332 billion, the figures from other leagues around the world still pale in comparison. Nevertheless, the more restrained spending across the window stands out, particularly as it follows the first season where the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules genuinely started to make an impact.”

The balance might have been even closer to balancing, were it not for an unprecedented summer of spending at Brighton & Hove Albion. The Seaguls were the club with the lowest transfer fee balance, at €-182 million, after several seasons of punching above their weight on a budget – including a first foray into Europe in 2023/24. But elsewhere, the apparently muted spend is not necessarily all so black and white.

To an extent, this is because some clubs have allegedly worked out how to game the system. Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest worked out deals either side of the PSR deadline that saw Elliot Anderson go to Forest for €41 million, while Newcastle would later sign third-choice goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos for a fee which has been reported to be over €20 million. This is something which critics have said means “questions will be asked” of how Premier League clubs may be maneouvering to avoid falling foul of PSR rules, while undermining its actual aims.

At the same time, since its takeover by a Sheikh Mansour, Manchester City has spent huge amounts of money assembling its empire – but this season it apparently has a positive balance of €116 million. It may be an over-simplification to say this shows a willing compliance with PSR, though.

Over the last 16 years, City’s owners have also created an expansive City network, including clubs in France, Spain, Brazil, the US and Australia. This has seen the Cityzens placed at the end of a talent pipeline bridging multiple continents, able to funnel talent into its ranks for less than the going rate, or more cynically, critics have suggested, to lumber those clubs with the regulatory hits Manchester City would face if they directly signed players themselves.

This season, City’s biggest signing was Savinho – a talented young Brazilian, who officially arrived from the network’s French club Troyes. Savinho was signed by Troyes for a club record of €12.5 million in 2022 – but never played a game for the club, which has suffered back-to-back relegations in recent seasons. Instead, he spent last season on loan at City Group’s Spanish outlet, Girona. He moved to Manchester for a fee which could rise to €40 million, which a few years ago would have been a lot of money – but is now less than it cost Aston Villa to sign Amadou Onana from Everton.