Historically in PL transfers, the highest fees on average should sit around 10% of the total league spend for the year. This rule has remained quite consistent throughout the PL era. It also gives a good indication as to what players from the past would’ve roughly cost today, and also how expensive a top player actually should be in the current market climate right now. For example, last year, the league spent around, a combined £860M, the top signings Nunez was £85M, so 10% of the total spend, and Anthony £90M just over 10%. Enzo Fernandez came in at about 12%.
To give you some context from the past, in 1993 Utd broke the British transfer record fee for Roy Keane at around £4M. The entire league spent just over £60M that year, so this deal was 8% of the total spend. It was a record at the time, but it wasn’t crazily over the mark.
In 1994 a year later, Utd broke the record transfer again for Andy Cole, this time for nearly double the amount of Keane, at around £7M. But the entire league spent more, and this one deal worked out at around 10% of the total leagues spend.
In 1995, Arsenal broke the record with the signing of Bergkamp for £7.5M, which was at 9% of the total. Liverpool then broke that record shortly after, with the signing of Collymore for 8.5M, which came in at 11% of the total.
In 1996, Newcastle bought Shearer for a British and world record fee of £16M. The league spend was around £100M in total, so this was a deal on the higher end, at about 16% of the total spend.
In 1997, Utd bought Henning Berg for 7.5M, which was nearly half the record price at the time, and it worked out at 5% of the total league spend. Chelsea and Aston Villa had the highest individual transfers of the season, with Greame Le Saux going to Chelsea, and Stan Collymore going to Aston Villa, both worked out at 10% of the total league spend.
In 1998 Utd signed Yorke for a fee of £18M, it was record money for the time, and it was around 9% of the total league spend.
In 2001 Utd got Veron for a record fee of £28M, it was a high price, and it was around 14% of the leagues spend at the time. In todays market, that works out at about £120M
In 2002, Utd broke the record fee again with Ferdinand for £30M. The spend was slightly lower this year for several reasons, but this figure equated to 25% of the leagues total spend, which is the highest ever %. It was a ridiculous figure at the time for any player, especially a CB. To put it in perspective, 25% today would cost you £215M. Ferdinand was a good player, but I don’t recall the media ridiculing Utd for over the top spending on this one. I checked out a few articles, and I was right, they didn’t, all they did was heap praise on him and analyse his potential. Which to be fair, is what they should do with every major signing for every club.
In 2003, they bought C.Ronaldo for £13M. We are told to marvel at the bargain price for the then 17 year old. But this was actually still 9% of the total spend that year. So it was still a high signing, today it would be £80M for a relatively unknown teenager from Portugal. Worked out well, but only a big budget team would be able to do that.
In 2004, they got Rooney for nearly double Ronaldo’s price at £30M, and that equated to double the spend %, coming in at 20% of the total league spend. Again, it’s at the very higher end of the scale, and suggest Utd could afford to pay double what they should to get him. In todays money, that would be £172M.
In 2006 they weren’t the top spenders, but they still bought Michael Carrick in at 10% of the total league spend.
In 2007 they bought 3 players, Nani, Anderson and Hargreaves’s for a combined 20% of the league total spend.
In 2008 we had our takeover, so I stopped looking at them at this point and instead looked at some of our own highest transfers to see how we faired with comparison to the league spend, this is what I saw:
Grealish - signed 2021 -14%
Dias - signed 2021 - 11%
Rodri - signed 2019 - 5%
Mahrez - signed 2018 - 11%.
KDB - signed 2015 - 10%
Sterling - signed 2015 - 9%
Aguero - signed 2011 - 9%
Dzeko - signed 2010 - 10%
Yaya - signed 2010 - 9%
David Silva - signed 2010 - 8%
Tevez - signed 2009 - 5%
Robinho - signed 2008 - 8%
Seems like we’re pretty good at getting players for fair market prices. I don’t really see anything in this that suggests we’ve done anything too differently from any other team in the past, especially Utd.
