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How net transfer spend of Premier League ‘Big Six’ compares since Pep Guardiola’s arrival with Man Utd outspending City
Incredibly, Man City aren't even the biggest spenders
PEP GUARDIOLA hit the panic button in the January transfer window.
After the worst run of his managerial career - which included five defeats in a row before collapsing against Feyenoord - he sanctioned a whopping £182million outlay to try and rescue Manchester City's season.
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City started off their New Year spending spree by landing centre-back Abdukodir Khusanov for £33.6m.
The Premier League’s first Uzbek player was followed to the Etihad by fellow defender Vitor Reis for £29.6m.
Guardiola then bolstered his attack with the biggest signing of the January transfer window in England, dropping £64m on Omar Marmoush from Eintracht Frankfurt.
Juma Bah joined for £5.1m and then City ensured they secured the four biggest deals of the month by snapping up £50m Spanish midfielder Nico Gonzalez on deadline day.
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Together with Savinho as their main new acquisition back in the summer for £21m, City spent more than £200m on players this season.
But they also made £159m in sales.
More than half of that came from Julian Alvarez’s exit to Atletico Madrid while Joao Cancelo headed to Saudi Arabia and once again the cash added up by letting a host of academy graduates go.
But City’s £201m expenditure and £42m net spend were both far exceeded by neighbours Manchester United.
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Ruben Amorim’s main signing in January was the £29m dropped on left-back Patrick Dorgu - adding to the £200m spent in the summer on the likes of Joshua Zirkzee, Leny Yoro, Matthijs de Ligt, Noussair Mazraoui and Manuel Ugarte.
With only £86m raised in departures, the 2024-25 net spend was £143m.
Meet Man City signing Nico Gonzalez, who is son of Pep Guardiola's former team-mate and could be £50m Rodri solution
And that was the biggest of the ‘Big Six’ this season - therefore extending their ‘lead’ as the overall biggest net spenders among the elite English clubs since 2016, when Pep Guardiola arrived.
1. MAN UTD - £1billion
Since 2016, Manchester United have spent a staggering £1.37billion on new players.
Paul Pogba’s £89m arrival that year remains the club record, although Antony (£85.5m), Harry Maguire (£85m), Romelu Lukaku (£75m), Jadon Sancho (£73m) and Rasmus Hojlund (£72m) all arrived in massive deals.
Their biggest signing this season was Leny Yoro for up to £52m.
United’s record sale remains Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid for £80m in 2009 so the highest fee received in the period since 2016 is the £73m they got from Inter Milan for Romelu Lukaku in 2019.
Ironically, the money banked for Mason Greenwood (£26.6m) and Scott McTominay (£25m) in the summer are among the biggest United sales of all time.
Across the period from 2016, United have sold £371m worth of players - the lowest in the ‘Big Six’ - to take their overall net spend to just about exactly £1bn.
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2. CHELSEA - £836million
Chelsea’s crazy spending has gone to even more bonkers levels since Todd Boehly took over in 2022.
But in the last nine seasons, the total is barely believable: a staggering £1.97bn.
This season’s £54m deal for Pedro Neto does not even make the top ten on their list - behind the likes of Wesley Fofana (£75m), Kai Havertz (£70m) and that man Lukaku again (£97.5m).
Chelsea are the only English team to have spent £100m-plus on two different transfers - the £106m for Enzo Fernandez and £100m, possibly rising to £115m, for Moises Caicedo.
But while Chelsea are the biggest Prem spenders, they are also the biggest Prem sellers, racking up £1.13bn in player exits - including £88m (Eden Hazard to Real Madrid), £65m (Havertz to Arsenal) and £60m (Mason Mount to United) - as their net spend works out as £836m.
That was helped by fetching big money for Ian Maatsen (£37.5m), Lewis Hall (£28m), Conor Gallagher (£36m) and Lukaku (£25.2m) this term.
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3. MAN CITY - £695million
We’ve already discussed City’s spending this season but how does that play into the overall picture in the Guardiola era?
In total, the Etihad giants are second for outlays on £1.46bn.
Marmoush’s arrival is fourth in their all-time list, just behind Ruben Dias and then a way off Josko Gvardiol (£77m) and record-signing Jack Grealish who cost £100m.
As with Chelsea, though, City fetch some hefty prices for selling off a wave of youngsters good enough for many teams but just not quite at Guardiola’s required elite level.
The Alvarez deal could rise to £81.5m while the money for Taylor Harwood-Bellis (£20m), Liam Delap (£15m), Sergio Gomez (£8.4m) and Tommy Doyle (£4.3m) racks up.
After Alvarez, City’s other biggest sales in the period are Raheem Sterling, Ferran Torres, Gabriel Jesus, Leroy Sane and Cole Palmer (all between £47.5m and £40m).
And the total tally is a net spend of £695m with Guardiola in the dugout.
4. ARSENAL - £688million
City’s net spend is just £7m or so more than Arsenal’s over the same period - but they have six more Premier League titles, four more League Cups, an extra Champions League and an extra Club World Cup to show for it, and the same number of FA Cups.
Arsenal’s total is £688m in the red - including approximately £23m this season with approximately £100m spent and £77m received.
David Raya (£27m), Riccardo Calafiori (£42m), and Mikel Merino (£31m) were the major arrivals but Emile Smith Rowe (£27m), Aaron Ramsdale (£18m) and Eddie Nketiah (£25m) all departed.
Arsenal have not been afraid to spend big, splashing out £60m on Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and £72m on Nicolas Pepe before the more recent arrivals of £65m Kai Havertz and £105m Declan Rice.
The Smith Rowe deal is their fifth-biggest sale ever - and Nketiah ninth - while Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain tops the pile on £35m to Liverpool in 2017.
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5. TOTTENHAM - £580million
Tottenham are just shy of the £1bn spending mark since 2016 - on £995m.
That includes £145m this season on record arrival Dominic Solanke (£65m), £40m on Archie Gray, £25m on Wilson Odobert and £12.5m on goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky who came in during January.
Other major outlays were Richarlison (£50m), Dejan Kulusevski (£25m), James Maddison (£40m), Pedro Porro (£37.3m), Micky van de Ven (£35m) and Brennan Johnson (£47.5m).
As for their sales, they total £415m in the time frame - the big one being Harry Kane leaving for Bayern Munich at the beginning of last season for an initial £86m.
Kyle Walker’s move to Manchester City in 2017 was worth around £50m but the biggest sales this season were Oliver Skipp to Leicester (£20m), Emerson Royal to Milan (£12.8m) and Joe Rodon to Leeds (£10m).
And that all means Spurs are down £580m on transfer fees since 2016.
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6. LIVERPOOL - £282million
Perhaps it is no surprise to see Liverpool with the best net spend of the ‘Big Six’ on a mere £282m over the past nine seasons.
In fact, the Reds have actually made a profit in the 2024-25 campaign by only buying Federico Chiesa for £10m and raising £50m in sales from Fabio Carvalho (£20m), Sepp van den Berg (£20m) and Bobby Clark (£10m).
It continued a wise - and successful - transfer strategy that has seen Liverpool sell big and then wait to find the right players at the right time for the right price.
In the pre-2016 era not included in these figures, Liverpool sold Luis Suarez, Fernando Torres and Raheem Sterling.
They then secured an eye-watering £145m from Barcelona for Philippe Coutinho in 2018, making up more than a quarter of their £505m in sales during the set period.
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Liverpool have not been afraid to splash the cash too - £787m in total since 2016 - with te overall £85.3m deal for Darwin Nunez in 2022 their record signing ahead of Virgil van Dijk (£75m), Alisson (£67m), Dominik Szoboszlai (£60m) and Naby Keita (£53m).
Interestingly, Liverpool’s £282m net spend since 2016 is significantly less than West Ham (£451m) and Newcastle (£396m) and just £8m more than Aston Villa after they sold Jaden Philogene (£20m), Diego Carlos (£8.5m) and Jhon Duran (£64m) in January.
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