The Premier League is almost able to field an XI bought for £1bn. Give Chelsea a few more years and they will sort it, with £70m the cheapest signing here.
GK: Kepa Arrizabalaga (Athletic Bilbao to Chelsea, £71.6m)
Gianluigi Buffon was the world’s most expensive goalkeeper for 5,820 days. Ederson reigned for just over 13 months. Alisson only managed three weeks. Kepa Arrizabalaga retains that mantle almost five years on, despite spending much of the intervening time not even his own club’s best shot-stopper.
This past season’s career renaissance of sorts does not point to a permanent reputation restoration for Kepa. Mauricio Pochettino has not even officially started work as Chelsea manager yet and the Blues are being routinely linked with players who can be trusted for longer than a handful of games between the posts. Kepa is not that man, even when those brief flashes of competence and even actual ability shine through.
The Spaniard did give Stamford Bridge a soft introduction to Todd Boehly’s contract fun, though; Kepa has two years left on the seven-year deal he signed in 2018.
CB: Harry Maguire (Leicester to Manchester United, £80m)
Another whose stock has fallen sufficiently to render the world’s most expensive player in his position an outsider at a club suffering a degree of buyer’s remorse, Harry Maguire was the captain around whom Ole Gunnar Solskjaer tried to establish a dynasty, then the cast-off immediately cast aside by Erik ten Hag.
The Man Utd manager has said all the right things to ensure the millstone he inherited has not been publicly ostracised, but actions speak louder than words and the signing of Lisandro Martinez was ear-splitting.
Maguire is approaching a double century of appearances for the club, skippering Premier League and Europa League runners-up campaigns while being neither as bad as his detractors insist, nor as good as his advocates ever suggested. But Bruno Fernandes has assumed responsibility of the armband and Luke Shaw has jumped the centre-half queue.
The 30-year-old has options, including staying at Old Trafford on the pretence he would be fighting for his place when the reality is that battle was lost long ago. If a bit-part role does not satisfy Maguire then Tottenham are interested and both Newcastle and Aston Villa are lurking.
Harry Maguire has been relegated 4 times in his career. Twice in one season. https://t.co/HG9L1lu7Js pic.twitter.com/bNcUjXBF5E
— Trey (@UTDTrey) June 13, 2023
CB: Wesley Fofana (Leicester to Chelsea, £70m)
Brendan Rodgers described the protracted sale of Maguire as “totally different” to the situation with Wesley Fofana which slowly unfolded three years later.
“I was aware over the course of the summer that that could happen,” the Leicester manager said on the Maguire deal, building up to a dig with a veil so thin it was imperceptible: “Harry in terms of his behaviour and his focus for the club, he was fantastic right until the last minute, then he moved on. It was different. For me, it’s always about the commitment.”
Chelsea had three bids rejected by the Foxes, amounting to around £60m with additional clauses. But it needed a fourth to break the resistance of a selling club which reluctantly accepted Fofana’s wish to leave when £70m and £5m in add-ons was received.
Those add-ons seem unlikely to have been triggered after a debut season in which Fofana played 20 games under four different managers, losing 11, helping keep four clean sheets and attracting the bafflement of Roy Keane.
CB: Virgil van Dijk (Southampton to Liverpool, £75m)
Before Liverpool signed Virgil van Dijk on New Year’s Day 2018, the most expensive centre-half in history was David Luiz (£50m), the great man removing new teammate Thiago Silva (£32m) from that particular throne in 2014. One further step back from Paris Saint-Germain’s Brazilian connection takes the lineage of the world’s most expensive central defender all the way back to Rio Ferdinand, who joined Manchester United for £30m in 2002.
The obvious importance of the position was appreciated, but not in transfer fee terms until Van Dijk. Liverpool laying £75m down on the Dutchman seemed to break the dam: there have been eight different moves worth at least £50m involving centre-halves in the subsequent five-and-a-half years.
Each have been chasing that transformative impact Van Dijk had on Liverpool, turning them from exciting but porous entertainers into stable, brilliant winners. They reached consecutive Champions League finals upon his arrival and dropped just 32 points in his first two full Premier League campaigns. The Dutchman has won the lot at Anfield, not missing a single minute of a title win and being named PFA Player of the Year in 2019, once again blazing a trail as the first defensive holder of that honour in 15 years.
Even now, with the 31-year-old slowing down and past his imperious, perhaps peerless physical peak, there are few better overall. The sums were astronomical but pound-for-pound, Liverpool have rarely spent more wisely.
RW: Antony (Ajax to Manchester United, £82m)
Doubts were expressed long before Manchester United completed the second most expensive signing in their history, and the only 180s conducted since have been by Antony himself.
Ten Hag vouched for and personally requested the purchase of his former Ajax colleague, which makes the manager’s sensible revolution at Old Trafford all the more impressive. A statement forward signing scoring eight goals and assisting three in his debut campaign ought to instigate an internal review of sorts but Ten Hag’s success has afforded Antony slightly more time and patience.
That will gradually erode if his game does not evolve after a testing first season. The work-rate and attitude of Antony cannot be questioned on the evidence thus far, but a lack of pace and the general one-dimensional nature of his style will only be tolerated for so long when that price tag and starting status weighs as heavy as it does.
CM: Paul Pogba (Juventus to Manchester United, £89.3m)
Having played at senior level for just two clubs by the age of 30, Paul Pogba is in a prime position to compare and contrast those experiences. And while he “can only say thank you to these two clubs,” the Frenchman does not believe that appreciation was always mutual.
“I came back to Juve, why? Because it’s really the club that helped me push myself,” Pogba said recently. “And really the love from the fans, the love from the club that I get, I didn’t get that in Manchester.”
The midfielder went on to state his “surprise” at being “given a label” when returning to Old Trafford in a British record transfer in 2016. Jose Mourinho revelled in the capture of a player who could be “at the heart of this club for the next decade and beyond,” but it was the souring of their working relationship which most heavily contributed to Manchester United’s eventual multiple organ failure.
That contemptuous association between the “virus” and a manager entirely incapable of finding a cure was only the start. Pogba continued to flit between fantastic and feckless as Manchester United embarked on their perennial and forlorn search for a suitable partner capable of unlocking the brilliance within. The world-record signing, as it was at the time, set the club back years as they tried any and all means to salvage it.
No player and no manager could make it work, and for the second time in his career joined Juventus on a free as Manchester United finally moved on without him.
CM: Enzo Fernandez (Benfica to Chelsea, £106.8m)
There were precious few positives to glean from Chelsea’s miserable first season without their Roman Abramovich stabilisers. Beyond that time they scored a goal and the other time they scored a different goal, a whole wedge of money was spent to become an entire bunch of awful.
The most silver lining to that dark Stamford Bridge cloud likely benefited from not being tainted by any of the nonsense for too long. Enzo Fernandez completed his remarkable seven-month rise in the winter, from €10m Benfica signing and Argentina youth international in June to a British record transfer as a World Cup winner in January. Mauricio Pochettino will build around his compatriot for good reason.
LW: Jack Grealish (Aston Villa to Manchester City, £100m)
A year is a long old time in football. While Miguel Almiron caught some stray bullets from Jack Grealish as the Manchester City winger was being a “moron” during the club’s Premier League title celebrations in 2022, the #antics of a Treble-winning national treasure were enjoyed heartily in 2023.
After the typical year of acclimatisation under Pep Guardiola, as well as a brief World Cup which Grealish seemed primed to cope with far better than most, the show pony transformed into a true thoroughbred with at least as much substance as style.
“When I signed for Man City and the price and stuff that came with it, I knew it wasn’t going to all be laughs unless I started the way Erling Haaland did. I think that’s the only way I wouldn’t get caned!” Grealish said at the start of his incredible season on and off the pitch. The 27-year-old has come a long way.
AM: Jadon Sancho (Borussia Dortmund to Manchester United, £73m)
As far back as August 2017, Jadon Sancho has been on the Manchester United radar. Borussia Dortmund’s ability to grant the ambitious young forward a clear first-team pathway meant they secured the Manchester City academy talent but his immediate burst onto the Bundesliga scene only crystallised interest from back home.
For each of the subsequent years until he finally arrived at Old Trafford in 2021, Sancho was frequently linked to a club hoping to build around a youthful British core; Manchester United even ‘forced the Germans’ into selling the England forward 12 months before he actually moved.
Sancho has, as yet, hardly been worth the wait. Twelve goals and six assists in 79 appearances is not reflective of the creative force as advertised in Germany. Those flickers of excellence have been infrequent enough for Manchester United to at least consider cutting their losses.
CF: Romelu Lukaku (Inter Milan to Chelsea, £97.5m)
Work has rarely if ever been quite as unfinished as the papers Romelu Lukaku opened again in 2021, a decade after his first Chelsea move. And the pile has only stacked up further, so disastrous has his second spell at Stamford Bridge been.
The problem a teenage Lukaku encountered and suffered from at Chelsea was a lack of opportunities. He made 15 appearances for the club during the 2011/12 and 2012/13 seasons, playing at least twice as often on separate loans with West Brom and Everton, before being permanently sold to the latter.
The issue an experienced Lukaku faced on his Blues comeback was perhaps a little more complex. The Belgian was signed to play a role he has never particularly suited, and his yearning for the comforting embrace and mutual appreciation of Inter bore itself out in an unseemly interview saga, after Lukaku publicly discussed his unhappiness while criticising Thomas Tuchel’s tactics.
It might be that Pochettino can salvage something from a club-record move which has been deeply unsatisfactory for all parties. Yet on Chelsea go, still apparently searching for a centre-forward while one they signed for £97.5m silently replays the Champions League final in his mind.
CF: Kai Havertz (Bayer Leverkusen to Chelsea, £71m)
Lukaku technically accounts for the two most expensive Premier League transfers involving a centre-forward. Darwin Nunez will hope to break that monopoly soon but his Liverpool add-ons are unlikely to have been triggered yet, in the same way Mykhaylo Mudryk has not yet earned his place in this XI.
Any clauses in the move which took Kai Havertz to Stamford Bridge have likely been activated. If 32 goals in 139 appearances has not prompted an additional payment of some sort, scoring the winner in a Champions League final surely did.
Yet the German has regularly been lost in the Chelsea forward shuffle, another profligate player whose functions are underappreciated by many and undermined by the rank operational incompetence of a club built on shifting sands. Arsenal like the look of him for a reason which has not always been particularly obvious these last three years.
Buying clubs: Chelsea (x5), Manchester United (x4), Manchester City (x1), Liverpool (x1)
Total cost: £917.2m
Most expensive players to miss out:
Romelu Lukaku (Everton to Man Utd, £75m)
Nicolas Pepe (Lille to Arsenal, £72m)
Ruben Dias (Benfica to Manchester City, £65m)
Darwin Nunez (Benfica to Liverpool, £64m)
Rodri (Atletico Madrid to Manchester City, £62.8m)
Mykhaylo Mudryk (Shakhtar Donetsk to Chelsea, £62m)