Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The Premier League is king. It’s where players want to play and it’s what broadcasters want to show.
You’ll find some, not all, fans of lower league clubs who claim to support Liverpool or Manchester United, too, or Scottish football supporters who also ‘have a Premier League team’. And with the ever-increasing sums of money changing hands, moving from one top flight team’s accounts to another, the division is the closest thing to football’s own private members’ club. So, why are we still pretending that the feared ‘Super League’ hasn’t already arrived in a different guise? Here, we’ve compiled 15 examples, just from this summer’s transfer window, that prove a ‘Super League’ already exists.
Hull City’s John Egan probably thought his Premier League days were over (Image credit: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images) Hull City signed 18 players, eight were over the £10m mark The Tigers were not good in the Championship last season, but my word did they get the job done when it mattered, crawling – or mauling – their way over the line in the play-off final. In order to compete in 2026/27, the choice was an obvious one: buy an entirely new team or suffer the consequences. They’ve done exactly that, bringing in 18 new faces, many of whom for significant fees. Prior to this summer, Hull had paid £10 million or more for just two players in their entire history: Ryan Mason and Abel Hernandez. This year, they’ve done it eight times, backed by the revenue they will make simply for participating in the richest league in the world.
£3.5bn was spent Three-and-a-half billion big ones. Billions. Yes, most of it will have been funded by private equity, sovereign states and borrowing – not the kind you get at your high street bank, either – but it’s £3.5 billion all the same. The best features, fun and footballing quizzes, straight to your inbox every week. Per club, it works out at an average spend of £175m, which is obviously a ridiculous amount of money to spend on blokes kicking a bag of air around. In Italy, Serie A clubs spent £940m, the 18 German Bundesliga teams collectively paid £673m on new signings, Spain’s LaLiga contingent forked out £650m and France’s Ligue 1 lot splurged £523m. That means the Premier League spent £720m more than the other four top five leagues combined.
Enzo Fernandez stands alongside Alexander Isak as the joint-most expensive signing in British transfer history (Image credit: Getty Images) Four players moved for over £100m Enzo Fernandez, Elliot Anderson, Bradley Barcola and Morgan Rogers were the four players who cost in excess of £100m this summer. That’s the same number of transfers exceeding £100m as there has been in the past Premier League three seasons. 33 of the 50 most expensive summer transfers were signings made by Premier League clubs While there were five in Serie A, four in LaLiga, three in the Saudi Pro League and three in Ligue 1, the Premier League dominated the list of the most expensive transfers this summer. Two-thirds of the top 50 big money movers were signed by Premier League clubs.
Chelsea unveil Morgan Rogers back in July (Image credit: Getty Images) Bournemouth to Benfica…actually, the other way round Bournemouth signed one of Portuguese football’s best up-and-coming defenders from Benfica when they landed Antonio Silva. And they managed to get him relatively cheaply as well, for around £20m. In years gone by, the only way a Benfica player would have joined Bournemouth would have been if it were on Championship Manager. This is no slight towards the Cherries, who are well-run, upwardly mobile, have earned their place in the top flight and been through dark times, but nowadays playing for a mid-table Premier League club with a comparably minuscule fanbase is more lucrative than for a team of Benfica’s history and heritage. Coventry City broke their transfer record three times in the space of a month Loum Tchaouna became the Sky Blues’ record signing on July 11, then Carl Rushworth on August 4. Three days later, Caleb Yirenkyi trumped them both. To compete in this league, teams must pay the price, do financially uncomfortable things and, in Coventry’s case, enter uncharted territory.
Caleb Yirenkyi at the World Cup (Image credit: Getty Images) Fulham signed three Real Madrid players Alvaro Arbeloa’s managerial CV reads: Real Madrid Castilla, Real Madrid, Fulham. Is it any wonder, then, that he’s snapped up a bunch of Madrid graduates to puppeteer in the Premier League? Probably not. Still, the sight of one-time Galacticos at Craven Cottage is the stuff of Championship Manager again. Let’s hope for Arbeloa’s sake, they’re signings that hit the ground running, because they didn’t do a great deal else in the window. Hull signed players from Rayo Vallecano (Madrid), Sporting CP (Lisbon), Olympiacos x2 (Athens), Genoa, Nice and Union Berlin Humberside, the East Yorkshire Riviera, or the UK City of Culture 2017, whichever you’d like to call it. It must have been some brochure Acun Ilicali and Hull City pitched to their transfer targets this summer.
More cynical observers might assume the club’s golden handshakes were the primary motivation for their new recruits. Not me, though. Have you been to The Deep? Glorious. Hull’s promotion party was as wild as it was unexpected (Image credit: Getty Images) Ipswich Town spent £189m – and still might be relegated It’s a tough gig when you spend almost £200m and are still bookmakers’ second-favourite to go down. In no other league in the world would that be the case. Go on, find one.
You can’t. The fifth-most expensive goalkeeper in history joined a team that finished 14th last season James Trafford to Leeds for £40m is, by Premier League standards, actually a really good deal. He solves a problem position for the club and gets regular first-team football which he was lacking at Manchester City. In Premier League terms, £40m isn’t that significant of an outlay on a single transfer these days, either. It’s a transfer that also makes him the fifth-most expensive goalkeeper in history.
Read that again. Pink to make the Leeds wink (Image credit: Getty Images) Liverpool spent £28m on an 18-year-old goalkeeper with 15 senior career appearances – then loaned him out Lucca Brughmans, ever heard of him? Didn’t think so. Well, he’s Liverpool’s new goalkeeper from Genk in Belgium.
And they’ve sent him back to Genk for the season. How many teams outside the Premier League would drop £28m on a goalkeeper and not use him? They’ve already got five, too. Although, you’d imagine Brughmans will supersede Freddie Woodman, Vitezslav Jaros and Harvey Davies when he returns to Anfield.
Manchester City have spent £236m on one position Three players, three great signings, £236m spent. Man City’s midfield is stacked following the signings of Elliot Anderson, Ayyoub Bouaddi and Enzo Fernandez. This has been a summer of transition for the club, and when teams go through such periods, the received wisdom is that it takes a few transfer windows to iron out the creases in the squad. Nope, not when you’re at the top of the Premier League food chain. Manchester City’s new man in midfield Elliot Anderson (Image credit: Getty Images) Newcastle spent £30m on a player with 12 career starts And they convinced a player in Matias Fernandez-Pardo, who would have had a Champions League platform with Lille this season, to join them despite the fact European football might not return to Tyneside for some time. As for the player with 12 career starts, that’s former Monaco midfielder Aladji Bamba. He must be good, but the sample size is sparse.
Nottingham Forest broke their transfer record for a striker who scored three goals in 49 apps last season Disclaimer: With the right support around him, adequate starts and minutes, Liam Delap could hit 20 goals a season. The problem is, he didn’t get that at Chelsea because very few strikers do, given the wealth of attacking options and culture of impatience. Still, smashing your transfer record for a striker with 13 career Premier League goals, only one of which came last season, is symptomatic of a league that has more money than sense, as the saying goes. Liam Delap on pre-season tour with Chelsea (Image credit: Getty Images) Spurs spent £85m on a midfielder with five international minutes, relegated in each of the past two seasons There’s no denying Mateus Fernandes is a very good footballer, but is he worth £85m?
Various clubs were in for him but West Ham had been relegated, their negotiating position weakened, and from the outside looking in, it appeared as though Spurs simply paid the Hammers’ asking price…at the first time of asking. The ability to spend £85m with the stroke of a pen is reserved almost exclusively for Premier League teams. Joe joined FourFourTwo as senior digital writer in July 2025 after five years covering Leeds United in the Championship and Premier League. Joe’s ‘Mastermind’ specialist subject is 2000s-era Newcastle United having had a season ticket at St.
James’ Park for 10 years before relocating to Leeds and later London. Joe takes a keen interest in youth football, covering PL2, U21 Euros, as well as U20 and U17 World Cups in the past, in addition to hosting the industry-leading football recruitment-focused SCOUTED podcast. He is also one of the lucky few to have ‘hit top bins’ as a contestant on Soccer AM. It wasn’t a shin-roller.
