The six best Premier League transfer windows of all time – starring Man City & Chelsea spending sprees

In the very near future, we’ll be in a position to judge this summer’s Premier League spending spree and discuss who ‘won’ and ‘lost’ the transfer window, should we feel so inclined – but the real impact of a good window isn’t always clear for years afterwards.

Today, we’re going to celebrate six of the best transfer windows in the history of the English top flight, but several of them only looked truly great when viewed through the lens of history. So let’s admire these brilliant bits of transfer business, while bearing in mind that we probably need to give all of this summer’s new signings a chance to get their feet under the desk…

Manchester City 2010

Manchester City had been nouveau riche for a couple of years by the time the summer of 2010, rolled around, but this was the spending spree which transformed them from noisy neighbours to serial champions. Out went the less impressive signings from previous windows (Robinho, Stephen Ireland, Javier Garrido, Emmanuel Adebayor, Martin Petrov and so forth) and in came some of the greatest to wear the sky blue shirt.

David Silva and Yaya Touré were the best of the bunch and between represent perhaps the best £50m spent in the top flight, but there was also James Milner, Jérôme Boateng, Aleksandr Kolarov and Mario Balotelli all joined as well, and the core of the team that would win their first Premier League title two years later was in place.

Blackburn Rovers 1992

This is, perhaps, cheating a little bit, because the concept of the transfer window simply didn’t exist back in the early Nineties – players could be bought and sold any time, and often were. But freshly-promoted Blackburn still put the summer to good use ahead of the very first Premier League season, signing the building blocks of the team that would go on to win an unlikely title three years later.

Alan Shearer is the obvious headliner here and without his goals there is no chance that Sir Kenny Dalglish would have lifted the famous trophy, but they also signed soon-to-be captain Tim Sherwood and winger Stuart Ripley, key cogs in the title machine – and later in the year, redoubtable defenders Henning Berg and Graeme Le Saux were added, too. They also picked up Swedish centre-back Patrik Andersson that summer and while he didn’t hang around long enough to win the title, he did go on to play for Bayern Munich and Barcelona. Not bad.

Leicester City 2015

Speaking of transfer windows which earned unlikely title almost by themselves, Leicester would surely never have won that astonishing title in 2016 without signing the great N’Golo Kanté the year before it what may be the finest piece of scouting the Premier League has ever seen – but he wasn’t the only key player signed the summer before their sudden success under Claudio Ranieri.

Christian Fuchs, Shinji Okazaki, Demarai Gray and Robert Huth all joined that summer, seemingly the budget-conscious purchases of a club preparing for a relegation battle but destined for far greater things. There were a couple of flops in there – a small prize exists for any non-Foxes fan who could have named Yohan Benaloune as part of the title-winning squad, but never has so little money been spent to achieve such an enormous impact.

Newcastle United 2022 (January)

A bullseye from more recent times now. There are plenty of snide remarks to be made about the source of Newcastle’s sudden wealth (plenty of them very valid) but few newly moneyed sides have splashed the cash so effectively, so quickly.

Kieran Trippier and Bruno Guimarães could have practically transformed the club by themselves in the post-Ashley world, such was the immediacy of their impact, but Newcastle also bagged Dan Burn and Matty Targett to bolster the defence and Chris Wood, whose goals propelled Newcastle away from the relegation zone and up into the comfort of mid-table. Lest we forget, Newcastle had only one match before January that season. An astonishing turnaround, even if you take issue with the means by which it was funded.

Liverpool 2018

Speaking of turning points, the summer of 2018 was when Liverpool finally spent the money required to go from also-rans to serious title contenders, and at least a couple of players who arrived that year will be remembered as Anfield legends for many years to come.

Alisson took over from the unfortunate but haphazard Loris Karius between the sticks and the brilliant Fabinho turned up to fix the midfield alongside Naby Keïta. Xherdan Shaqiri didn’t achieve quite as much, but did make everything a little more fun. They cost over £150m between them and the spending wasn’t quite over, with a certain Virgil van Dijk arriving during the following January window. They haven’t splashed the cash anywhere near as much since, and arguably haven’t really needed to.

Chelsea 2004

Chelsea have provided the football press with plenty of reasons to make fun of their transfer business lately, but while the Roman Abramovich years had their ups and downs when it came to sensible spending, the fans will always have the pitch-perfect 2004/05 to point to.

The £130m or so spent was an absolutely massive sum at the time, but look at the players in purchased – Didier Drogba, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Arjen Robben and Petr Cech were all in there and probably worth twice as much by the time they were all done. Granted, there were some more forgettable buys as well in the form of Tiago Mendes and Mateja Kežman, but Alex was a pretty decent defender and the five headline names all ended their careers draped in medals. No club in Premier League history has ever managed to sign five players that good in one summer, before or since.