Let’s pretend, for a second, that you spent the summer blissfully unaware of anything to do with the transfer window. You enjoyed the final weekend of the Premier League season, you switched off completely from club football for three months and then sat down on Saturday night to watch Match of the Day.
How out of touch with the comings and goings would you be?
Well, perhaps surprisingly given the huge spending power of the Premier League clubs, not at all. Things are slightly different for the promoted clubs, who inevitably have to invest more, but the pre-existing 17 Premier League sides were familiar from last season.
Across those 17 clubs, only 14 new signings started at the weekend. Only three clubs — Brighton & Hove Albion, West Ham United and Wolverhampton Wanderers — fielded more than one new signing from the outset. More clubs — Arsenal, Brentford, Chelsea, Liverpool, Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest — started with an entire side who were at the club in 2023-24.
This isn’t what you expect from the richest division in the world, whose teams’ revenues so dramatically dwarf their competitors that their financial dominance is increasingly considered a problem.
Tottenham’s Dominic Solanke was one of the weekend’s new starters (Darren Staples/Getty Images)
But looking at incomings is only one side of things. The Premier League’s financial power is strongest in the reverse sense. English top-flight clubs do not, by and large, lose key players.
That becomes increasingly apparent when considering a different metric. If you take each of those 17 clubs’ most-used 11 players from last season — judged purely on minutes, rather than on positional factors — they have only lost 12 players between them, with the 12th move occurring after the weekend games, when Conor Gallagher completed his move from Chelsea to Atletico Madrid.
Aston Villa and Fulham both lost two ‘key players’, a few other sides lost one, but eight clubs’ most-used 11 players from last season remain at the club. In terms of transfer fees and wages, Premier League clubs are very rarely outmuscled.
If we combine ‘new signings in the starting XI at the weekend’ and ‘players from last season’s starting XI who have since departed’ to formulate something like a ‘turnover index’ for the opening game of the season, none of the pre-existing 17 Premier League teams score more than three points.
Let’s go through those 17 clubs in turn, and look at precisely how consistent their squads are from last season. And let’s expand it to 16 players, effectively including five substitutes.
Arsenal’s 16 is entirely intact from their near-miss last time out. Emile Smith Rowe was sold to Fulham but didn’t feature regularly. Similarly, Aaron Ramsdale is being linked with a move away, but he was very much the backup to David Raya. Eddie Nketiah is the only other figure on this list who might move before the end of the transfer window.
At Aston Villa, Douglas Luiz’s departure was a major blow but Moussa Diaby wasn’t always in the side in the second half of last season, and Clement Lenglet was only on loan anyway.
Bournemouth are one of four clubs to have lost their most-used player — and replacing Dominic Solanke is about compensating for his goals rather than his mere minutes. But Andoni Iraola hasn’t always played with a proper No 9 at previous clubs, so might be suited to moving on from Solanke.
Brentford’s only notable departure was Neal Maupay, who was on loan. And while Ivan Toney seems set to move to Saudi Arabia, his suspension for half of last season means Brentford are accustomed to coping without him anyway — and their results without Toney last season were actually slightly better than when he started. Besides, with his contract expiring next summer, Brentford seem keen to sell now, and receive a fee.
Pascal Gross’ departure is clearly a problem for Brighton, although they did well to hang onto such a talented creator for so long.
In general, not losing key players could be considered a positive, although Chelsea are an example of it being a problem. They have only lost Gallagher and 39-year-old Thiago Silva from last season, and the plethora of new signings means that Raheem Sterling, ninth on the list, did not make the matchday squad at the weekend.
How about Crystal Palace? OK, Michael Olise left for Bayern — but he was injured so much last season he doesn’t feature here anyway. Palace, for now, are largely intact from last season, although Joachim Andersen seems set to return to Fulham, where he spent the 2020-21 season on loan.
At Everton, Amadou Onana joined Aston Villa and Ben Godfrey moved to Atalanta — but even considering their financial difficulties, Everton haven’t been forced into a huge number of major departures.
Fulham are one of the more affected clubs, with tenacious midfielder Joao Palhinha, centre-back Tosin Adarabioyo and versatile forward Bobby De Cordova-Reid all departing. But this is as bad as it gets for any Premier League club — and ultimately, it’s only two first-teamers leaving.
New manager, same players at Liverpool. Supporters might want some fresh blood, particularly in midfield, but this remains a very good squad, and for all the speculation that a couple of key players might decide to follow Jurgen Klopp out of the door, Liverpool have retained their most important players.
At Manchester City, Julian Alvarez feels like an outlier — a player who wanted to jump ship to a foreign club, Atletico Madrid, rather than stick around at one of England’s biggest sides.
These days, we increasingly see fans conducting ‘squad audits’, where they suggest that about 50 per cent of players should leave, but it never really happens, and nor should it. Manchester United have moved on two defenders, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Raphael Varane, and brought in good replacements, Noussair Mazraoui and Matthijs de Ligt.
Perhaps we expected Newcastle to make more signings but this should be considered a good summer for them — keeping top-class players Alexander Isak and Bruno Guimaraes, and everyone else who played a prominent role last season.
Nottingham Forest get a special category here, as Orel Mangala had already left for Lyon in January. Moussa Niakhate followed him there last month but their exciting attacking unit remains together.
Twelve months after perhaps the most painful player departure in Tottenham’s history, they have bolstered their midfield and attack without losing anyone particularly important, aside from the divisive Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg.
Amid some major incomings at West Ham — and a new manager — there have been no major departures. Said Benrahma, like Forest’s Mangala, had left on loan for Lyon in January, and his move has been made permanent.
Two major departures for Wolves — their most-used player, Maximilian Kilman, and also arguably their best player, Pedro Neto, although his injury problems have prevented him from playing consistently in recent seasons.
What is also relevant is the destination of some of the key departing players. Where have they moved to?
To keep things relatively brief, let’s go back to considering the 11 players who were in their side’s most-used XI last season. From these 17 clubs, that’s 187 players. Palhinha (Bayern), Gross (Dortmund) and Douglas Luiz (Juventus) have all joined genuine European giants — it’s inevitably tough for Fulham, Brighton and Villa to compete with them. Silva was moved on by Chelsea due to his age. Alvarez’s switch to Atletico was about playing time — or, more relevantly, playing time in his favoured position up front. Gallagher’s move to the same club was influenced by Chelsea’s desire to force him out.
Another five players — Solanke, Onana, Adarabioyo, Kilman, Wan-Bissaka — have remained in the Premier League. Four of them have moved up the table based on last season’s standings, with Wan-Bissaka the only exception.
That leaves Diaby, a slightly surprising mover to Saudi Arabia after just one Premier League season. Aston Villa more-or-less recouped the fee they paid last season.
Overall, Premier League clubs’ best players are not being poached by clubs from other European leagues. That, more than the new signings, is the Premier League’s strength.
Of course, we can look at some of this in a less favourable light. Maybe some clubs have too many players on their books or could do with raising some funds, and those players are reluctant to move to middling clubs in Spain, Italy, Germany or France because the wages on offer aren’t attractive enough. But, as a general rule, if a club wants to get rid of a player, they won’t have been in their 11 — or 16 — most-used players from last season.
Over the next few weeks, more signings will start matches. The transfer window remains open for another week — and the transfer window in Saudi Arabia is open for another month after that. More upheaval will occur but for now, if you’ve ignored all the summer transfer news entirely, you really haven’t missed much.
(Top photo: Catherine Ivill – AMA/Getty Images)
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