The most important Premier League Trends
Day 7 of the 12 Days of GBE Expert Hub Content
The Premier League has become the powerhouse of the transfer market.
Whilst a few isolated places may pay higher wages, and there are the odd instances of higher fees being paid, there can be no doubt that the Premier League is the #1 league in the world for transfer activity
The chart above is just one demonstration of this.
The data from the expenditure of the top 25 leagues in the world from the summer window just gone demonstrates the spending power of the Premier League. 2.3 billion Euro was spent by the twenty Premier League clubs altogether, that figure equates to the total spent by the next three biggest spending leagues added together, in this case, Serie A, Ligue 1, and the German Bundesliga.
It is no surprise, therefore, that so many players want to play in the Premier League, and that so many agents would love to target the Premier League for their players. The transfer market is a food chain, and the Premier League sits at the very top of it.
You may well have spotted the EFL Championship in the chart above. The second tier in England sits as the 7th highest league in the world in terms of expenditure in the summer window just gone. The EFL cannot be ignored, and, indeed, we will observe the most important trends in the EFL on Day 8 of The GBE Expert Hub.
How do the profiles for Premier League transfers break down?
The GBE Expert Hub has a record of every transfer made into England over the last decade.
Using this data we are able to investigate all kinds of trends. If you have any investigations or projects that you think would be useful to your practice using this data then we would be happy to work with you.
The chart below details how many players have been transferred into the Premier League over the last decade broken down by season. Alongside that information is the amount of money spent by Premier League clubs in Euro. Data provided by Transfermarkt.
There was a definite downturn in the number of transfers into the league from 2018 to 2022. Whilst neither Brexit nor the COVID pandemic could be cited as reasoning for this initial reduction, both things could be responsible for it continuing into the 2020s.
Once the market settled back down following these two seismic events, there were more transfers in a season since 2015-16. The 2022-23 season is also responsible for the highest overall spend in a season of the Premier League ever, just over 3BN Euro.
Undisclosed transfer fees are not included in the totals.
It is interesting to note that the average age of players being brought into the Premier League via a transfer seems to be getting progressively younger.
It hasn’t been an even trend, but transfers completed between 2023 and 2024 concern players with an average age below 24. Back in 2014 the average age was around 25, even transfers in 2022-23 averaged almost 25 years of age.
The average fee paid by Premier League clubs has also risen over the last decade. Of course, a part of this will be inflation, but it would also be fair to say that more is being asked of Premier League clubs, and, perhaps, the quality of player being brought into the Premier League demands a certain size of fee at this moment in time.
Are there any Brexit connotations in this information? Certainly the average fee does seem to go up dramatically post-Brexit regulations coming into force in 2021. It would take a deeper investigation to attempt to disentangle the narratives here though, perhaps something for a later piece in the paid subscription.
How have the Brexit regulations affected transfer business?
All of the above information is very interesting, but not necessarily Brexit related, which, is the whole point of this platform, so lets have a look at some GBE specific data.
The GBE Expert Hub has looked at all of the transfers that have been completed in the Premier League and attempted to calculate how many of those used both the GBE and ESC regulations.
The GBE transfers are totalled in the chart below. For reference, there have now been eight windows under GBE regulations.
We know, of course, that Nottm Forest have used the transfer market heavily. Too heavily for the regulators, hence the points deduction, but it has also clearly worked for them in the long term as they currently sit fifth in the Premier League.
Chelsea’a apparently scatter-gun recruitment appears to have taken some shape now under Enzo Maresca, and, indeed, many pundits are beginning to praise Chelsea’s recruitment and are marvelling at their young and talented squad. It certainly has taken a lot of spending and a large number of GBE requiring transfers to get to this point though.
Wolves and Brighton are the other clubs who have bought more than 20 players that required a GBE.
At the other end of the scale, one might expect to see the clubs who have spent only one season of the last four in the Premier League down there i.e. Ipswich, Luton, and Norwich, but it is quite surprising to see Newcastle there.
The club from the North East have bought Bruno Guimaraes, Garang Kuol, Sven Botman, Alexander Isak, and Sandro Tonali under the GBE legislation.
Where do Premier League clubs spend their money?
We can break the information down further. Taking the transfer details we are able to see where Premier League clubs have spent their money in the last decade.
Whilst we are able to break this down into specific leagues (again, perhaps an idea for further investigation later in the platform’s life) here we can see it broken down into the different bands.
(For a reminder of the bands, check out this piece from Day 1 of the platform)
The dates of the spends run from most recent on the left to historic on the right of each section.
It is clear to see that Band 1 dominates in terms of money spent. In 2022-23 and 2023-24 the amount of money spent in Band 1 went over 1BN Euro. There is much less money spent in Band 2, and yet even that amount of money, usually around 200-300m Euro, dwarfs the amount spent in the other bandings.
It is also interesting to note that the money spent in Band 3 is substantially more than was spent there pre-Brexit, so it would appear that the regulations are working a little bit for those leagues.
The number of players coming in from the different bands also teases out some interesting trends.
There isn’t really much difference overall in Band 1, indeed, the average number of players coming into the Premier League from the other Band 1 leagues is probably slightly higher over the last four seasons.
There is no difference in Band 2 either, and this illustrates how the points system works in that the tariff for Band 1 and Band 2 isn’t particularly obstructive in bringing players in from those leagues.
Band 4 is interesting as fewer and fewer players from those leagues appear to be coming into the Premier League. Potential theories for this might be that the standard required to even be a squad member in the Premier League at this stage is so high that perhaps these Band 4 players are not reaching that standard.
We know how many players and how much money has been spent on transfers into the Premier League from above, but this chart shows us the ratio of how much of that was on domestic transfers.
Interestingly, the summer window just gone is the highest ratio of money spent domestically i.e. transfers between English clubs, than at any time in the last decade. This was fuelled by transfers such as Dominic Solanke's move to Tottenham from Bournemouth, Pedro Neto from Wolves to Chelsea, and Amadou Onana from Everton to Aston Villa.
What has ESC done for Premier League clubs?
As we explained in the Basics of ESC article on Day 2, the regulations were changed before the Summer 2023 window to make it easier to sign players who didn't manage to meet the autopass or points based system.
Part of the reasoning to bring this in was so that Premier League clubs could buy young talent before they fully established themselves in a major league.
But has this actually happened?
The GBE Expert Hub has had to look into every transfer to see which looked like they were passed by ESC regulation. There is no public record of whether signings are made by ESC or GBE or exceptions panel, but none of these transfers looked to be possible by GBE so it is likely that they were completed due to ESC.
Whilst some clubs have embraced the ESC slots, Chelsea and Wolves pop up again here, there are many big names who don't appear to have used their slots at any stage so far.
Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, and Manchester City are the regular Champions League qualifiers who haven't, as far as we know, used an ESC slot to sign a player.
So, which are the highest profile uses of the legislation and what is happening with them?
The above are the transfers that we have noted as likely ESC transfers conducted by Premier League clubs and ordered by transfer fee.
The first thing to note is the ages of the players. There is a definite trend to use these slots for very young talent, the majority of the players on the list are teenagers, so it is very early to totally judge the success, or lack thereof, of any individual signing.
Wilson Odobert became a pretty immediate first team success for Burnley and turned over a big profit in a move to Tottenham in the summer. Yankuba Minteh also proved useful for Newcastle in staving off FFP regulations by making a profit by moving to Brighton.
It will be interesting to see what becomes of the other ESC transfers and whether any Premier League club can make the system work for them.
Tomorrow, we take a look at the EFL and what has been happening there in the last few years…