Premier League transfers: Man Utd's net spend in last 5 years compared to Liverpool is staggering

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·30 July 2021

Premier League transfers: Man Utd's net spend in last 5 years compared to Liverpool is staggering

We’re a little more than two weeks away from the start of the new Premier League season and clubs are working hard to finalise their squads.

However, it’s been a fairly quiet summer so far.

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With the European Championships and Copa America taking place - and then the players involved enjoying a break - it’s been difficult for clubs to get deals done early.

We’re likely to see more deals completed before the end of the transfer window on August 31.

The biggest spenders so far appear to be Manchester United.

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They’ve signed Jadon Sancho and a permanent deal to sign Raphael Varane will be confirmed in the coming days. They’ve also been linked with Kieran Tripper.

It’s something we’ve seen in recent years with the Red Devils willing to splash the cash in order to bring back the glory days.

In fact, they’re actually the biggest spenders when it comes to net spend - the total expenditure subtracted by the total income of selling players.

We used transfermarkt to look at the net spend of every Premier League club in the last five years and it highlights a few rather interesting things.

Let’s take a look at the table:

Let’s start with Man United. Their net spend is more than £100m of Manchester City, who find themselves in second place. And that’s without the unconfirmed signing of Varane included. However, Pep Guardiola’s side could leapfrog their rivals if they manage to sign both Harry Kane and Jack Grealish this summer.

Speaking of which, Aston Villa are, perhaps surprisingly, in third place. They will tumble if they sell Grealish to City in the coming weeks.

Arsenal are, obviously, in fourth suggesting they have underachieved in recent years. More underperformers follow with Brighton in fifth and Everton in sixth having very little joy with their relatively large net spend.

Champions of Europe, Chelsea, are seventh in the list. Not down to their lack of spending but more their ability to offload players for hefty fees.

Both Wolves and Tottenham are above Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool. The Reds have a net spend of just £164.71m showing that the German manager is performing miracles at Anfield, winning both the Champions League and Premier League. This is largely down to selling Philippe Coutinho and earning sizeable fees for fringe players.

Leicester also deserve credit with a net spend of £114.36m as they continue to cope with clubs plucking their very best players.

Newcastle will complain that Mike Ashley often refuses to put his hand in his pocket and they may have a point with a net spend of less than £100m in the last five years.

Meanwhile, Southampton have benefited by selling some of their stars - most notably to Liverpool - as they sit in 16th position in this table.

The three newly-promoted sides are in the bottom three. Watford have spent £14m of their own money while Brentford and Norwich have both made profit of more than £50m since 2017/18.