We dug into 15+ years of January transfer window stats to work out the Premier League’s biggest spenders — from the first window in 02/03, right up to 2019.
We’ll start with this animated timeline, which shows the 10 Premier League clubs with the highest net spend (income minus expenditure) in each January window.
Share TweetHere’s the list of the biggest spenders each season:
Season | Club | Net Spend |
---|---|---|
02/03 | Newcastle | £13,500,000 |
03/04 | Arsenal | £17,060,000 |
04/05 | Spurs | £16,340,000 |
05/06 | Arsenal | £20,030,000 |
06/07 | West Ham | £22,190,000 |
07/08 | Chelsea | £31,050,000 |
08/09 | Man City | £49,950,000 |
09/10 | Man City | £7,200,000 |
10/11 | Chelsea | £75,150,000 |
11/12 | Chelsea | £18,630,000 |
12/13 | Liverpool | £25,200,000 |
13/14 | Man Utd. | £38,640,000 |
14/15 | Man City | £28,870,000 |
15/16 | Newcastle | £34,530,000 |
16/17 | Crystal Palace | £37,530,000 |
17/18 | Man City | £62,100,000 |
18/19 | Chelsea | £49,190,000 |
Cumulative Net Spend by Club
Next, let’s take a look at total January transfer window spend.
The chart below shows accumulating net spend over the 17 years since the first window opened on January 1st 2003.
Share TweetAnd here’s the full list. There are 40 clubs in total who have been in the Premier League for at least one January transfer window. We’ve included the total of number of Premier League January transfer windows (seasons) for each in the table.
note: a positive number means the club has spent more than they received (a net spend), while a negative number means the club has received more in fees than they paid out.
Club | Seasons | Net Spend |
---|---|---|
Arsenal | 17 | £93,951,000 |
Aston Villa | 14 | £36,504,000 |
Birmingham | 7 | £19,125,000 |
Blackburn | 9 | -£13,889,000 |
Blackpool | 1 | £270,000 |
Bolton | 10 | -£7,058,000 |
Bournemouth | 4 | £50,130,000 |
Brighton | 2 | £25,200,000 |
Burnley | 5 | £18,190,000 |
Cardiff | 2 | £21,930,000 |
Charlton | 5 | -£8,834,000 |
Chelsea | 17 | £66,530,000 |
Crystal Palace | 7 | £71,770,000 |
Derby | 1 | £779,000 |
Everton | 17 | £43,789,000 |
Fulham | 13 | £2,804,000 |
Huddersfield | 2 | £11,930,000 |
Hull | 5 | £22,250,000 |
Leeds | 2 | -£21,250,000 |
Leicester | 6 | £13,316,000 |
Liverpool | 17 | -£55,294,000 |
Man City | 17 | £184,063,000 |
Man Utd. | 17 | £38,330,000 |
Middlesborough | 8 | £26,194,000 |
Newcastle | 15 | £35,388,000 |
Norwich | 5 | £27,104,000 |
Portsmouth | 7 | -£22,820,000 |
QPR | 3 | £27,300,000 |
Reading | 3 | £12,260,000 |
Sheffield U | 1 | £4,910,000 |
Southampton | 10 | -£43,232,000 |
Spurs | 17 | £86,546,000 |
Stoke | 10 | £64,895,000 |
Sunderland | 12 | £21,680,000 |
Swansea | 7 | £10,370,000 |
Watford | 5 | £7,529,000 |
West Brom | 12 | £2,690,000 |
West Ham | 14 | -£4,851,000 |
Wigan | 8 | £8,520,000 |
Wolves | 5 | £3,443,000 |
Manchester City are comfortably the Premier League’s biggest historical spenders in the January transfer window. The £184m they spent over 17 windows was almost double the total of the second highest spenders Arsenal (£94m).
Did your team spend big in January?
About The January Transfer Window + Thanks
The January transfer was first introduced in the Premier League during season 02/03. This year’s January transfer window will open on Wednesday 1 January 2020 and close on Friday 31 January.
To prepare this article, we collated data from https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/
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Share TweetBiggest spenders by year:
Cumulative spend:
Note: we took care to ensure the data in this article is accurate, however, if you believe we have made any errors, then please contact us for correction.