The summer transfer window was closed on Tuesday, September 1 in England, the last of the major European leagues.
The clubs in the English Premier League (EPL), in response to the opportunity, beefed up their squads with huge amounts of money, which total broke last year’s record; £25million lower.
As well as the frenzy of the last-minute deals in the EPL, Manchester City again flexed their financial muscle as the continent’s top spender, as a staggering £860million or more was spent on in England alone just this summer.
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Manuel Pellegrini, Brendan Rodgers, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho and Louis Van Gaal are the top five mangers in the EPL
Anthony Martial’s arrival from AS Monaco for £36 million, labelled a panic-buy by sections of the British media, made up the Premier League clubs’ record expenses of over £860 million and confirmed the EPL’s status as the leading league in terms of transfer spending in the window all over Europe.
According to Supersport.com, Manchester City, who have won their first four league games this season, led the way with an outlay of £150 million, including the £50 million-pound capture of midfielder Kevin De Bruyne from Wolfsburg, and forward Raheem Sterling from Liverpool in a deal that could reach £49 million.
United who took their outlay past 100 million with Tuesday’s deal for 19-year-old French striker Martial, followed their ‘noisy’ neighbours closely, with the recruitment of Memphis Depay, Morgan Schneiderlin and Bastian Schweinsteiger into Old Trafford.
Another top club, gunning for Champions League football, Liverpool, made a statement with their spending during the summer transfer window.
The Reds, who lost key players; Steven Gerard and Raheem Sterling to the Major League Soccer and Manchester City respectively, spent a whooping £80 million majorly on Christian Benteke from Aston Villa (£32.5m) and Hoffenheim’s Roberto Firmino (£28.5).
In spite of the heavy transfer prices paid to get new players in, some top clubs were economical with their spending as they showed a lot of restraints in recruiting new players.
Chelsea, a religious big-money transfer culprit, almost closed the purse strings with their biggest outlay being on Spanish forward Pedro from Barcelona for €30 million and with defensive target John Stones, refusing to leave Everton, the English champions recouped the vast majority of their transfer outlay through sales and loan fees.
Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger renown for keeping his powder dry could not dare splash the cash again after spending big on Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez in the last two summer windows.
This season, he has spent only a paltry £10 million on former Chelsea goalkeeper, Petr Cech, as the ONLY recruitment he made this summer in spite of his club’s indifferent start to the new season.
The back-to-back FA Cup winner has been asked to leave the club as Twitter was set on fire Wednesday morning with#WengerOut tweets by angry and disgruntled Arsenal fans and followers