The updated Premier League net spend table 2024 - from Chelsea and Man City right down to Everton

Titles and trophies are all very well, but we all know that there’s only one accolade that the terminally-online modern football fan is really interested, and that’s to come right at the top of the updated net spend table. Alright, maybe winning the Premier League is still slightly more satisfying, but it’s still nice to know that your team is doing some shrewd business.

To help ease those social media debates along a little bit, we’ve ranked all 20 Premier League sides by net spend over the last five seasons so you can figure out whether your club (and its rivals, of course) have spent well or wasted a whole bunch of cash. Most of you will be able to guess who comes in at number one, but there are also quite a few surprises along the way. Our numbers, incidentally, come from Transfermarkt and won’t necessarily be exact in the long run as they will include unpaid add-ons and exclude future fees for loan signings and so on, but the picture the figures paint is clear enough.

20. Everton (£27.7m profit)

Yes, the Toffees have actually made money in the transfer market over the last five years, the only top-flight side to do so. Depending on your perspective, that either represents a drastic lack of investment in a struggling squad or proof that a shrewd businessperson can both keep a team up and make some money at the same time. We can take a wild guess at which side most Everton fans will come down on, especially given that the club is also in a massively perilous financial position despite their stinginess and were deducted points twice for financial breaches… In other words, we’re kicking things off with proof that net spend really can mean absolutely nothing without context.

19. Wolverhampton Wanderers (£17m)

Wolves have made a profit for both of the last two seasons, helped along by the big-money sale of Pedro Neto this summer, and the era of strange overspends on ageing Portuguese players seems to be behind them – these days, they’re signing young, talented Portuguese players for reasonable fees instead, which seems rather more sustainable. If Gary O’Neil can continue to keep them well above the relegation zone, then they’ll start to look like a very well-run club indeed.

18. Leicester City (£23.4m)

The first of the freshly-promoted clubs, Leicester made money on transfers for both the 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons although that wasn’t enough to prevent them from stepping over the profit and sustainability line last season – a punishment from the Premier League may follow this season. If it does, it may serve as proof that net spend doesn’t prove much when taken out of the context of wages, income, and all the other more tedious bits of accountancy required to run a football club.

17. Brighton & Hove Albion (£38.1m)

So well-run are the Seagulls that they can come this low on the net spend table despite a massive £154.1m loss on transfers from the summer of 2024, second only to Chelsea. This is the moment at which all those years of buying cheap and selling high and turned into spending big and hoping that it results in long-term success and some trophies. Let’s see how it works out for them

16. Southampton (£60.3m)

The Saints handled relegation a couple of years back well, turning a profit of £139.6m thanks to the sale of players like Roméo Lavia. Selling players to Chelsea seems to be quite the theme for clubs who kept the finances healthy over recent years. In any case, Russell Martin’s side did spend nearly £100m in pursuit of making that promotion stick this summer, pushing them back into the red, although even one year in the top flight is probably worth more than that these days.

15. Brentford (£95.8m)

As the numbers start to tick up towards the £100m loss mark, we come across another well-run side who have kept the spending sensible while also keeping their heads above the water in the Premier League. The sale of Ivan Toney to Saudi Pro League side Al-Ahli has helped, but they’ve still invested fairly heavily over the past couple of seasons and really need to start seeing some returns from the young guns brought over to the Community Stadium. It’s fairly remarkable, after all, that they’re still running with exactly the same midfield they had when they earned promotion in the first place.

14. Ipswich Town (£111.9m)

Almost all of the Tractor Boys’ spending comes from this summer. They spent the most out of all three promoted teams as they sought to construct a squad capable of staying up, and that’s perhaps reasonable when considering that they spent less than £10m total – not even net – on players in the four years building up to their surprise elevation from the Championship, which is quite a remarkable financial statistic.

13. Bournemouth (£118.0m)

The Cherries spent fairly freely for the past two seasons but the club record sale of Dominic Solanke this summer means that this was one of their tighter transfer windows since getting back to the top table, which should play well with the old profit and sustainability rules. A mid-table net spend finish for a side which feels pretty solidly mid-table in actual football terms as well…

12. Fulham (£123.4m)

…which is a statement you can fairly make about Fulham as well. The Cottagers have kept it fairly tight for the last few seasons, never making a profit but never losing more than £42m either, and even that was a bit of an exceptionally high splash by their standards and saw them get hold of João Palhinha and Andreas Pereira, among others. Not bad business, really, but it does make you wonder if the transfer money might have been redirected to that rooftop swimming pool.

11. Manchester City (£139.1m)

Yes, really, the megabucks Emirati-backed champions of England aren’t even in the top half of the net spend table, a surprise result facilitated by making the better part of £100m this summer from the sales of players like Julián Álvarez – they’ve now made money in two of the last three seasons, which is a bit unexpected. Things look very different if you start pushing the timeframe back past five years, admittedly. They did all the really serious spending to get this squad together a few seasons back. That said, it’s worth noting that these figures only look at transfer fees and don’t include, say, the absolutely gargantuan signing bonuses and agent fees paid out to secure Erling Haaland’s services.

10. Crystal Palace (£146.6m)

Into the top half, now, although Crystal Palace wouldn’t be so high if Newcastle United’s summer-long pursuit of Marc Guéhi had been more successful. As it is, though, the Eagles still turned a profit this time around thanks to the sale of Michael Olise and Joachim Andersen – good news for the club’s accountants, but perhaps less so for manager Oliver Glasner, who will be looking to maintain last season’s forward momentum and push for a European spot. If they get it, they will have done it for a relatively low outlay.

9. Aston Villa (£217.1m)

A little over £200m – that, apparently, is what a first Champions League place in four decades will set you back, although there are one or two club who have spent more and got less bang for their buck than Unai Emery has. Nearly half of the outlay came from back in the 2020/21 season when the Midlands outfit splashed out on Ollie Watkins, Emiliano Martínez and Matty Cash, among others, which seems to have been a pretty solid investment so far.

8. Nottingham Forest (£223.7m)

Never a team to sign one player when they can buy four instead, Forest were deducted points for an overspend last season so it’s no surprise to see them quite a long way up this table even though they’ve only been in the Premier League for three seasons out of the five we’re looking at. A bulging squad does at least contain a few canny buys such as Murillo, Anthony Elanga and Morgan Gibbs-White.

7. Liverpool (£253.2m)

Liverpool tend to spend in waves, with big splashes followed by a couple of quiet years – but as this table demonstrates, it’s all rather relative, and even with allegedly parsimonious owners they’re still troubling the European places in the net spend league. Despite signing Giorgio Mamardashvili and Federico Chiesa this summer, they actually made a small profit to kick-start the 2024/25 campaign. They may be forced to spend more next summer, however, should players like Mohamed Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk run their contracts down.

6. West Ham United (£276.7m)

Europa Conference League trophies don’t come cheap – the Hammers are right up towards the top of the spending charts despite getting a whacking great £105m payday when they sold Declan Rice to Arsenal last summer. Heavy spending in 2022/23 has been followed up by some expensive backing of new head coach Julen Lopetegui this summer. If they aren’t pushing for the European placings again, it could be said that the club are underachieving.

5. Newcastle United (£371m)

A huge jump now from sixth to fifth of roughly one entire Brentford’s worth of spending. Newcastle used to sit pretty close to the bottom of these tables back in the tight-fisted Mike Ashley days, but their controversial influx of Saudi Arabian cash means that they’re now one of the biggest spenders in the Premier League, and they at least have a top four finish and a League Cup final to show for it. Failing to get a deal for Guéhi over the line does, however, mean that they actually turned a profit of around £6.7m this summer.

4. Tottenham Hotspur (£458.9m)

Spurs have been spending heavily for rather longer than Newcastle, and still don’t have anything tangible to show for it, a fact that every football fan in North London is keenly aware of. More than £300m has been spent over the last three seasons by one of the most consistent spenders in the domestic game – let’s hope for the sake of their fans that Solanke’s goals are worth something silver and shiny eventually. Not the place to go if you judge return on investment solely in terms of trophies.

3. Arsenal (£469.6m)

The other team from North London have spent a little more over the past five years but are, at least, a little closer to the top of the table, or at least have been for the past couple of seasons. Rice represents a pretty hefty portion of their outgoings but Mikel Arteta’s team hasn’t been assembled cheaply across the pitch. It may mollify frustrated Spurs fans a little that over the five years we’re looking at, the Gunners are only one Community Shield up on their great rivals.

2. Manchester United (£548.1m)

Few teams have had quite so many expensive flops as Manchester United have had in recent years – only one, in fact, and we’re getting to Chelsea soon so don’t worry – and while the Glazers might not be noted for their generosity of spirit they’ve still thrown more money at the squad than any team who’s actually won the title in recent times. Erik ten Hag is very keen to point at his FA Cup and League Cup wins at the moment, so at least they do have something to show for all that free spending, but few would argue that they have as much as they should for all that transfer business.

1. Chelsea (£795.3m)

Absolutely miles ahead of the competition, Chelsea are a very long way clear at the top or bottom of the net spend league, depending on how you look at it. Remarkably, 84% of their net spend from the last five years has come since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital took over at Stamford Bridge, and they have spent an absolutely massive amount of money and signed a quite incredible number of players in a very short space of time to soar to the top of these rankings. Was it worth it? As yet… let’s be honest, absolutely not. But who knows, maybe Jadon Sancho will help them turn that corner - or they’ll just continue to behave like a demented magpie in the transfer market, signing every shiny object in sight. Whatever the future holds for Chelsea, it probably won’t be dull.