The biggest spending Premier League clubs of the 2024/25 season - including Chelsea and Man United

With the end of the January transfer window, Premier League clubs have spent a massive £2.35bn since the start of the 2024/25 season – which, amazingly, actually represents a drop in spending compared to the two previous campaigns. Those profit and sustainability rules certainly appear to have reined thing in a little bit.

Still, it’s an enormous amount, and slightly higher than the total GDP of the Seychelles. But how much did every club spend over the course of the season? Who made the biggest splash and who kept the purse strings tightly closed? Here are all 20 Premier League teams ordered from the stingiest to the most lavish of the lot, based on Transfermarkt’s estimates.

20-16: Liverpool & Newcastle among surprise misers

• 20. Liverpool - £35m
• 19. Everton - £41.8m
• 18. Newcastle United - £56.8m
• 17. Leicester City - £74.1m
• 16. Fulham - £76.2m

Clearly, money isn’t everything. Liverpool are (at the time of writing) the runaway league leaders despite spending less cash than anyone else in the top flight, not that their team is anywhere near the cheapest given how much players like Virgil van Dijk and Alisson cost. Still, one has to admire what Arne Slot has achieved given that’s having to use another man’s tools and has yet to be backed in the market by his club.

Seeing Liverpool’s Merseyside rivals Everton this list is hardly surprising, given the financial difficulties they’re in following Farhad Moshiri’s tenure as club owner, but it is a bit surprising to see Saudi-backed Newcastle so far down. They did, in fairness, try to spend about £70m on Marc Guéhi, a purchase which would have sent them soaring up the standings.

It’s less surprising to see Fulham and Leicester down here. Leicester have had a pretty rough financial ride themselves and only avoid a penalty for breaching the PSR due to a technicality. Fulham, meanwhile, have that fancy rooftop swimming pool to pay for.

15-11: Two top four contenders keeping it tight

• 15. Crystal Palace - £76.5m
• 14. Brentford - £81.9m
• 13. Nottingham Forest - £87.8m
• 12. Arsenal - £90.7m
• 11. Southampton - £101.7m

Would Arsenal have been in a better position to challenge Liverpool had they splashed out on a striker? We’ll never know, but their abortive (and frankly optimistic) pursuit of Ollie Watkins didn’t pan out, and as such they ended up spending less than £100m over the course of the campaign. Mikel Arteta even admitted to being “disappointed” with their transfer work, which isn’t a glowing reference for their new transfer department.

Of course, you can still do great things without spending much, as Nottingham Forest prove. The days in which they threw money around in scattergun fashion and persistently signed more players than they could even register seem to be gone, and a more focused approach has paid dividends.

Freshly-promoted Southampton are the first team to break the £100m barrier, not that their signings seem to have paid off, unfortunately. At the time of writing, it all looks a bit bleak for the Saints, but it must be said that Mateus Fernandes, signed in the summer from Sporting, looks pretty special.

10-6: Big money, bad results

• 10. Wolverhampton Wanderers - £103.7m
• 9. AFC Bournemouth - £104.9m
• 8. West Ham United - £120.4m
• 7. Ipswich Town - £127.2m
• 6. Tottenham Hotspur - £146.2m

Of the second tier of Premier League spenders, four are lodged firmly in the bottom half of the table and only Bournemouth – who really have been highly impressive under Andoni Iraola – can look back at their transfer business which pride as it stands.

In fairness, a fair chunk of Wolves’ spending came in January and we can’t pass judgement on how good Emmanuel Agbadou, Marshall Matsebi and Nasser Djiga will prove to be, while Spurs’ issue is less who they signed (is anyone really going to argue against Dominic Solanke and Mathys Tel?) and more whether anyone stayed fit.

Ipswich have an excuse too, in that they’re a newly-promoted side who had a lot of ground to make up, and in any case they spent a fair amount of that money on young players who have already done well in the second tier, so even in the worst case scenario their long-term investment is probably fairly sound.

So honestly, while the cash-to-points ratio of these five is pretty poor overall, it’s arguably only West Ham who made a bit of a meal of things, spending big on players who have either failed to live up to their billing (like Jean-Clair Todibo) or failed to stay fit for five minutes (the unfortunate Niclas Füllkrug) so far. There’s still time, of course…

5-1: Can I put that on the Amex?

• 5. Aston Villa - £178.7m
• 4. Manchester City - £202.7m
• 3. Manchester United - £204.0m
• 2. Chelsea - £211.4m
• 1. Brighton & Hove Albion - £233.5m

Yes, Brighton really are the biggest cash-splashers in the entire Premier League. The days of wheeling and dealing, buying low and selling high probably aren’t completely gone – they’re still signing them young and probably have Chelsea on speed-dial – but the Seagulls have finally decided to stop turning a profit and start spending in the hunt for regular European football.

The extent to which they’ve outspent the rest of the Premier League is even more stark given how far ahead of the rest they are on net spend. Brighton’s total transfer loss this season comes in at a hefty £192m, about £67m more than any other club in the league (Ipswich come second, as it happens).

Speaking of net spend, we should probably note that Aston Villa actually turned a profit thanks to the big-money sales of Jhon Durán, Douglas Luiz and Moussa Diaby (although they really only broke even over two years with that last one), so while they’re high up on the spending table they actually made more money than any other team. Crystal Palace, Newcastle, Everton and Liverpool all made a profit as well, but it’s Villa who lead that way on that score.

As for Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City, all of whom were struggling to differing degrees at the time of writing, well… we suppose money can’t buy you class. Well, it can, these are the three most successful sides of the Premier League era and money had a lot to do with that, but perhaps it goes to show that it only buys you class if the people spending it know what they’re doing – or just that nothing lasts forever, even if it felt like it would. Sorry, Pep.