Value Creation in the Premier League Transfer Market
Introduction
Every football fan has an opinion on which clubs buy well. Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth have built reputations for finding players nobody else has spotted and selling them on for a large profit. Chelsea has spent close to £2bn on players in five years. And Manchester United seem to have a gift for signing big names who never quite deliver.
These views are widely accepted in football. But how much truth is there in them? Which clubs are actually creating value from their spending, and which are losing it? Here we put a number on it.
Over the last five seasons, Premier League clubs have spent £14.6bn on players, of which around £1.6bn went on agent fees and the Premier League levy, and recouped £7.0bn from sales. That is £7.6bn of net spend. Over the same period, the combined estimated market value of the 20 squads rose by just £4.3bn.
Put simply, the league as a whole has paid £3.3bn more for its players than they are now worth. That gap is not spread evenly. Some clubs turn every pound spent into more than a pound of squad value. Others spend heavily and end up with a squad worth less than the money put in.
This report sets out to answer the question of which clubs are creating value, and which are losing it? Has each squad grown in value by more or less than the club has spent. We assess this over the last five seasons, looking at changes in total squad value and the individual deals that have driven those changes.
Why is this important? Squad value is a club's main asset, the source of future sale profits, and an increasingly important lever under the Premier League and UEFA's squad cost rules. A club that keeps losing value has to keep spending just to stand still.
Value is only half the story, and every club should be assessed alongside what happened on the pitch. Arsenal have lost £283.5m of value over the period yet built a squad that finished second three times and won the title in 2025/26. Losing value to win is a very different thing from losing value and going backwards.
Methodology
The analysis looks at the overall value creation of each club, with Squad Value Added as the headline measure, and also looks at individual deals and which are driving the change in value.
Club level: squad value added
We take each club's squad market value at the end of 2020/21 as the starting point. We then add everything spent on players, less income received from sales, from 2021/22 to 2025/26. That gives what the squad would be worth if every pound of net spend simply held its value. We compare this with the actual squad market value at the 2025/26 year end.
Squad value added = (market value 2025/26 − market value 2020/21) − net spend on players. This is the headline measure for the analysis. A positive figure means the squad has grown in value by more than the money put in. A negative figure means value has been lost.
As an example, Brighton's squad was worth £246.5m at the end of 2020/21. Over the next five seasons they spent £552.9m on players and received £568.4m from sales, a net inflow of £15.5m. On that basis, the squad would be worth £231.0m. It is actually worth £576.5m, meaning Brighton have added £345.5m of value.
Player level: the good and not so good deals
We also assess all material deals for all 20 clubs: 1,212 in total. This covers players bought and later sold and players still at the club.
Player value created - value now less the all-in cost. The all-in cost is the transfer fee plus estimated buying costs of 12%: the 4% Premier League levy and around 8% in agent fees. Value now is the sale fee if the player has left, or their market value if they are still at the club. Academy players count from a zero fee.
Player value lost per year - transfer fee less the sale amount or current value, if still at the club. To normalise for time spent at the club, we divide the amount lost by the years at the club, with a minimum of one year. A £60m signing now worth £30m after three years has lost £10m a year. Buying costs are left out, as including them would mainly penalise new arrivals. We exclude summer 2026 signings and players who have been at the club for more than six years.
Sources and Conventions
The analysis is based on the 20 clubs competing in the Premier League in 2025/26.
Market values are primarily from Transfermarkt, converted at €1.15 to £1, and replaced by the actual sale fee where a player has been sold. Market value is an estimate, not a price. It is the best consistent yardstick across 20 squads, but it is not necessarily what a buyer would pay tomorrow.
Squad market values include players loaned out to other clubs but exclude players loaned in.
Net spend comes from published club accounts and includes agent fees, levies and add-ons. The figures include our estimates for 2025/26 for all clubs except Manchester United, who have already published their accounts.
Player-level purchase and sale fees are the initial fees widely reported and exclude future add-ons
Key findings
Only six of the 20 clubs have added value since 2020/21. The other 14 have spent more on players than their squads have gained in value, and the biggest spenders have lost the most.
Brighton are in a league of their own.
The squad has grown from £246.5m to £576.5m while the club has been a net seller by £15.5m. That is £345.5m of value added, more than double anyone else.
Manchester United are at the other end, £1.1bn behind Brighton.
They have lost £809.0m of value, the most in the league, spending £856.2m net for a squad worth just £47.2m more than five years ago. Around £124m of that went on agent fees and the levy alone.
From Brighton at +£345.5m to United at −£809.0m, the gap between the best and worst is more than £1.1bn. Yet on the pitch there is little between them: United have averaged 61 points a season, Brighton 55.
Most promoted clubs that stay up create value, but relegation hurts.
Nottingham Forest (+£161.5m), Sunderland (+£159.7m), Brentford (+£129.7m) and Bournemouth (+£87.6m) complete the top five. They have generally bought young, relatively inexpensive players and sold at the right time. Clubs that have suffered relegation have all lost value: Fulham (−£148.2m), Leeds (−£115.5m) and Burnley (−£27.8m).
Value for money is what counts.
The bottom five are all Big Six clubs, with £3.1bn of value lost between them. They can absorb losses that would sink a mid-table club, so the real question is what they get for them.
Liverpool and Chelsea have lost almost exactly the same amount, £677m each. Liverpool turned it into 385 points and a title; Chelsea managed 302 points and none. Arsenal lost less than half as much (−£283.5m) and won 401 points and a title, while Spurs lost £641.2m for 276 points, just one more than Brighton.
Manchester City (−£88.7m) are the exception, though given everything currently surrounding the club, their figures are probably best left alone.
The value creators don't rely on their academies.
The six clubs that added the most squad value — Brighton, Brentford, Sunderland, Bournemouth, Forest and Palace — buy young, inexpensive players and develop them. Their signings have generated +£990m of value, three times what their academies produced. Brighton bought Caicedo for £4.5m and sold him for £100m; Brentford signed Mbeumo for £5.8m and sold him for £65m.
The others often do the opposite.
They buy players closer to their peak, who then lose value, while using their academies to help offset those losses. Chelsea's academy has created £499m of value, through the likes of Mount and Reece James, but that covers only half of the £1bn they have lost on signings such as Lukaku and Mudryk. City's £400m from Foden, Palmer and O'Reilly and others almost exactly cancels out the £395m lost on Grealish, Phillips and others.
The best deals of the period
Erling Haaland: £57.3m all-in cost, now worth £173.9m (+£116.6m). Morgan Rogers at Villa runs him close, adding £108.0m of value on an all-in cost of just £9.0m.
The biggest value drops are recent and expensive.
Measured by value lost per year, Alexander Isak at Liverpool tops the list: bought for £125.0m, now worth £73.9m, a loss of £51.1m in his first season. Wissa (−£28.3m a year) and Elanga (−£24.2m) at Newcastle follow.
Judging the value of these recent signings is more difficult. None of these three has had a good first season, hence the value drop, but it would be very unlikely that any would be sold for these amounts if the club wanted to move them on. However, we have decided to apply the same methodology consistently across all players rather than make adjustments for individual circumstances.
In all, 51 signings have lost £10m or more a year, and 20 of them were made by Chelsea and Manchester United. Against all-in cost, Pogba (−£99.7m), Grealish at City (−£94.6m) and Lukaku at Chelsea (−£84.0m) are the biggest write-offs.
The big clubs buy at the top of the market.
A club chasing the title cannot wait three years for a teenager to develop. It pays peak prices for proven players at or near their peak value, leaving less room for further growth. Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth do the opposite: they buy before the price is set and sell at the top. The player lifecycle works for them and against the big clubs.
Their lost value is someone else's profit.
Over the period, the Big Six paid £2.46bn for 48 players from other Premier League clubs: Isak to Liverpool (£125m), Rogers to Chelsea (£117m), Anderson to City (£116m), Rice to Arsenal (£105m) and Caicedo to Chelsea (£100m). Much of the value the Big Six have lost shows up as value created further down the table. The transfer market is one of the main ways money flows from the top of the league to the rest.
What It Really Means
A negative number does not automatically mean a club has made poor decisions. Squad value is an asset that is used to generate points, prize money and Champions League revenue. Before judging the numbers, four things need to be taken into account.
The cost of buying.
Every signing loses some value the moment it completes, before the player has kicked a ball. On top of the fee, clubs pay a 4% Premier League levy and, we estimate, around 8% in agent fees.
Because our net spend comes from club accounts, these costs are already included. Across the league they come to roughly £1.6bn of the £14.6bn spent, about half of the £3.3bn gap between spend and squad value. Manchester United have paid around £124m in buying costs alone, Chelsea around £213m.
The Premier League premium.
Sellers know English clubs can pay, and they price accordingly. New signings are typically valued about 6% below the headline fee in their first season. Add the buying costs and a typical signing is worth around 16% less than it cost on day one.
The clubs that avoid this premium buy before the price is set: Caicedo for £4.5m, Mitoma for £2.5m and Rogers for £8m.
The player lifecycle.
Players have a career of perhaps ten years, so value rises and then falls. In practice, the decline is slower than the accounts assume. Signings still at their clubs lose about 5–8% of their value a year, against the 20% a year implied by five-year amortisation. After five years, the median signing is worth just under 60% of its original fee.
Inflation flatters the numbers.
The combined value of the 20 squads rose 60% over the period, from £7.1bn to £11.4bn. That tailwind is already reflected in the closing values. Even with it, 14 clubs still lost value.
Club by Club Analysis
The dashboard below looks at each club individually. Select a club to see the detail behind its numbers, including the deals that have driven the change in squad value.
Conclusion
The numbers show that there is a significant difference between spending money and creating value.
Brighton sit at one end of the scale. Their squad has added £345.5m of value over five seasons despite being a net seller, showing what can be achieved by identifying players early, developing them and selling when their value is highest. At the other end, Manchester United have lost £809.0m of value despite £856.2m of net spending.
The gap between the two is more than £1.1bn. Yet the difference in their results on the pitch over the same period is far smaller, with United averaging 61 points a season compared with 55 for Brighton.
That does not mean losing squad value is necessarily a bad thing. A club competing for the Premier League or Champions League cannot always wait for players to develop, and paying a premium for established talent can be justified if it delivers success on the pitch. Arsenal are a good example.
But over five seasons and across more than 1,200 deals, the numbers show that buying well matters. Clubs that consistently acquire players for less than their eventual value create an asset that can improve performance, generate transfer profits and reduce the amount they need to spend to maintain their squad.
The best clubs are not necessarily those that spend the least. They are the ones that get the most value from what they spend.
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