Premier League clubs : How much each owes in future transfer instalments – Astonishing | OneFootball

For some time now, the norm for Premier League clubs has been to mainly pay for signings in a number of transfer instalments.

This gives Premier League clubs the opportunity to be more ambitious in the transfer market.

Buying players but paying for them in a number of transfer instalments over future years.

For Premier League clubs and the transfer market it is of course a question of balance, both in terms of how much money you agree to commit AND how and when those signings are paid for.

A new report has revealed just how much Premier League clubs owe in future instalments for signings they have made.

When it comes to football finance expertise, Kieran Maguire is one of the main men.

The latest available financial figures for Premier League clubs (including some who were recently PL clubs) have been used by Kieran, including updates today (19 February 2025) from Manchester United and Arsenal.

Kieran Maguire analysing the situation for each of these Premier League clubs.

The individual amounts owed by each of the Premier League clubs, as per those last available accounts:

As you can see, the current position on all known accounts/financial updates, these Premier League clubs owing over £3billion in future transfer instalments. An astonishing figure.

The ‘big six’ owing between them well over £1.8billion of that £3billion+ figure.

Chelsea (£491m), Man U (£414m), Spurs (£307m) and Arsenal (£268m) the stand outs, although Man City (£230m) and Liverpool (£123m) owing plenty as well. Many clubs will in reality have significantly higher transfer instalment debts, for example, in this new report from Kieran Maguire it won’t yet include the fact that Man City did around £185m of incoming deals in January 2025 and much of that will be to paid in future transfer instalments.

Whilst with the likes of Manchester United and their £414m owed in transfer instalments, when you put that with all their other debts via loans etc, it means they owe in total over £1bn!

As for Chelsea, in the 2025 Deloitte football rich list, the football clubs with the highest revenues (which don’t include player trading) in world football covering the money generated in the 2023/24 season, the Stamford Bridge club were tenth highest in the world.

However, that 2023/24 total revenues (not incl player trading) figure for Chelsea was €546m, which works out at around £452m, which is £39m less than what they still owe in transfer instalments according to this new report!!!

In contrast, Newcastle United owing £80m in transfer instalments is well down towards the lower end of this report. United working themselves into far better financial position in recent windows.

This is also from a PSR perspective.

Amortisation isn’t a magic answer either.

When a club buys a lot of players and the transfer fees are spread in the accoounts over the years of the player contracts. All it means is that say if you pay £50m for a player and he is given a five year contract, then instead of a £50m negative straight away in the accounts in that initial season when you bought him, it is a negative £10m for each of the five years of his contract.

So when Man U have made disastrous signings such as £85m for Antony and £73m for Sancho, each season there are serious negative amortisation amounts for each player every season of their contract feeding into the yearly accounts.

With Chelsea it is even more ridiculous, even more spent on signings, many of them failures, their transfer fee in the accounts spread over the many years of their contracts via amortisation.

These clubs may still have far bigger revenues coming in than Newcastle United, but as they keep spending, the amounts of cash owed and the impact on their PSR positions get ever more significant.