The end of the summer 2024 transfer window saw Brighton beating Ipswich Town to have the highest net spend of any club in the world.
An astonishing £193 million net was spent bringing in nine new players. And yet when you look at profit and loss over the past five years, the Albion are still in profit by nearly £39 million. This is testament to Tony Bloom’s genius.
For this article, I am again indebted to the work and charts of BlueCityBrain. They have completed a fascinating analysis of Premier League spending since 2020.
(Blue City Brain include all add-ons in their work, hence why their figures quoted are slightly higher than in some reports.)
Where has Brighton’s spending power come from?
Simply put, Brighton were able to spend £193 million this summer almost based on the past two seasons of outgoing transfers alone.
Moises Caicedo, Alexis Mac Allister, Marc Cucurella, Robert Sanchez, Leandro Trossard and Deniz Undav all left over that period for big fees.
Most of that money has come from Messrs Boehly and Eghbali… when they were last seen talking to each other. Let us hope they can sort their differences, for the sake of the Albion’s future bank balance!
The five-year £39 million net surplus includes other sales, like Ben White to Arsenal and Yves Bissouma joining Spurs.
But it does not include the £22 million Chelsea paid for Graham Potter and his coaching team. If you add that, the Albion are in even bigger profit.
What else can we take away from these five-year net spend numbers? At the start of the period, Chelsea had just won the Champions League. Manchester United finished second in the Premier League. £1.5 billion later and…
Premier League wage bills
To give a more rounded picture of Premier League spending, it is important to consider annual wage bills in addition to transfer fees.
Manchester City spent huge amounts on transfers during their period of excess between 2009 and 2018. Hence why they face 115 charges.
Significant credit has been given to their ability to maintain top performances without any net transfer spend over the past five years.
They do though have the highest wage bill going into the 2024-25 season, according to figures put together by GiveMeSport. Money is still the number one factor driving performance in English football.
Brighton meanwhile only have the 15th highest. Annual wages remain the biggest indicator of just how much the Albion punch above their weight.
| Club | Annual Wages | |
| 1 | Manchester City | £205,660,000 |
| 2 | Chelsea | £190,970,000 |
| 3 | Manchester United | £181,940,000 |
| 4 | Arsenal | £170,716,000 |
| 5 | Liverpool | £125,580,000 |
| 6 | Spurs | £111,826,000 |
| 7 | Aston Villa | £101,400,000 |
| 8 | Newcastle | £98,800,000 |
| 9 | West Ham | £90,740,000 |
| 10 | Crystal Palace | £66,560,000 |
| 11 | Everton | £64,142,000 |
| 12 | Nottingham Forest | £62,580,000 |
| 13 | Fulham | £59,696,000 |
| 14 | Bournemouth | £56,758,000 |
| 15 | Brighton | £55,202,000 |
| 16 | Wolves | £54,386,000 |
| 17 | Leicester | £54,106,000 |
| 18 | Brentford | £41,470,000 |
| 19 | Southampton | £32,942,000 |
| 20 | Ipswich | £17,768,000 |
Brighton net spend and transfer window summer 2024
Spending significantly in the summer 2024 transfer window always appeared a part of Bloom’s long-term plan, although even he has admitted he did not expect to be quite so busy.
Speaking to the Albion Podcast on the club website, Bloom said: “It’s always an evolving process, at the start of the window I wouldn’t have expected to sign so many players.”
“Circumstances whereby a lot of Premier League clubs have financial issues staying within the rules, more availability, everything has aligned, we got almost everyone we were after.”
The table below confirms the nine players brought in by Brighton and the departures the Albion received known transfer fees for, using the BlueCityBrain figures including all add-ons.
| In | Fee | Out | Fee |
| Ferdi Kadioglu – Fenerbahce | £29.5m | Pascal Gross – Dortmund | £8m |
| Mats Wieffer – Feyenoord | £25.5m | Marc Leonard – Birmingham | £0.5m |
| Malick Yalcouye – IFK Gothenburg | £6m | Billy Gilmour – Napoli | £16m |
| Matt O’Riley – Celtic | £25m | Deniz Undav – Stuttgart | £25.7m |
| Brajan Gruda – Mainz | £25m | ||
| Amario Cozier-Duberry – Arsenal | Free | ||
| Ibrahim Osman – Nordsjaelland | £16.8m | ||
| Yankuba Minteh – Newcastle | £33m | ||
| Georginio Rutter – Leeds United | £40m |
Expectations on Brighton
To date, Fabian Hurzeler has shown no signs of feeling additional pressure brought on by increased expectations through Brighton having the biggest net spend in the world.
“I’m very thankful that the club shows their ambition, especially Tony Bloom the chairman and Paul Barber the CEO,” Hurzeler has said.
“They showed their ambition by doing this, by signing great players who might improve the club. In the end it’s up to me and my team to use these players and to make out of individual players a group.”
“That’s the most important thing, to create a team and create a togetherness. That will be my job together with my experts in my staff, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m very thankful that the club shows their ambition by making these signings.”
Brighton in future transfer windows
Bloom added on the Podcast: “We have done a lot of business this transfer window and I’m not expecting that much in the next two or three windows, even if one or two of our key players go.”
“Because we have such strength coming through particularly with the amount of young players within the squad and also the ones we have brought and they have gone out on loan.”
“They are top young players and on top of that we have some great prospects in our academy, some of them have now gone out on loan so we are in really good shape.”
Peter Finn
