The most expensive XI in Premier League transfer history revealed
The Premier League is able to field an entire XI bought for well over £1bn, with Chelsea dominating and no room for poor Declan Rice.
This is a team Arsenal midfielder Rice cannot make at 23% fitness even if he tried his damnedest.
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 retains that mantle eight years, two loans and a permanent move later.
Chelsea, meanwhile, continue to stumble and muddle through imperfect goalkeeping solutions despite otherwise spending literal billions assembling their squad.
CB: Harry Maguire (Leicester to Manchester United, £80m)
Another whose stock has fluctuated wildly between most expensive player ever in his position and saviour of the future, to poster boy for financial incompetence, Maguire is on his latest quest to outlast another Manchester United manager.
For his myriad faults and foibles, the England centre-half is as committed to the cause as they come, although obviously no Big Dan Burn.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Manchester United definitely just tried to copy Liverpool’s homework but missed most of the working-out, figuring that simply spending a world-record sum on a defender makes them an unbeatable leader of men for the best part of the next decade.
But across seven years at Old Trafford, Maguire has given far more to the club than he has taken away. And if that sounds like a remarkably low bar for an £80m signing, he’s one of a handful who can say the same in that timeframe.
CB: Josko Guardiol (Leipzig to Manchester City, £77m)
The Premier League always seemed to beckon for Gvardiol. Leeds almost signed the Croatian in the season after their top-flight promotion, while the centre-half publicly discussed his dream of playing for Liverpool for years.
Try as they might, Chelsea simply could not extract Gvardiol from Leipzig in summer 2022, when the man Boehly was throwing money in every direction.
A £77.4m bid was not enough to persuade Leipzig to sell then, but Manchester City found their breakthrough with a similar figure 12 months later.
Gvardiol might not take immense pride in being named the club’s Player of the Season in what was a trophyless and often quite miserable 2024/25, but he has already collected a few winner’s medals in his spell at the Etihad.
CB: Virgil van Dijk (Southampton to Liverpool, £75m)
Before Liverpool signed 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.
And it remains the mark against which all other centre-half transfers are judged. None have matched the 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 35-year-old slowing down and past his imperious, perhaps peerless physical peak, there are few definitively better defenders overall. The sums were astronomical but pound-for-pound, Liverpool have rarely spent more wisely.
RW: Morgan Rogers (Aston Villa to Chelsea, £117m)
It is not a position in which Rogers is particularly comfortable – and indeed not the one Chelsea have reportedly promised him. But whether it be drifting behind a Villa centre-forward, floating on the left of a Chelsea front three or doing a job on the right of an XI Garth Crooks would wince at, the England international is worth making a place for.
Thomas Tuchel recognised that at the World Cup and Arsenal certainly appreciated it, but Chelsea put their considerable money where their absurd mouths are by making Rogers the most expensive British footballer ever.
In doing so, they removed Antony from this team and should never be forgiven.
READ: Prem’s £100m-plus deals ranked: Arsenal top as Chelsea, Liverpool pocket big money
CM: Moises Caicedo (Brighton to Chelsea, £100m)
For about £4.5m, Brighton signed Caicedo from Independiente del Valle on deadline day of the 2021 winter transfer window. Two and a half years and 53 appearances for the Seagulls later, the midfielder was sold for what was then a potential Premier League record fee thanks to some elite-level desperation.
Caicedo long seemed destined to join Chelsea in the summer of 2023, but some painful attempts at bargaining with actual professional poker player Tony Bloom saw their bids fall predictably short at £80m.
Then Liverpool crashed in with an offer of £111m, accepted by Brighton but certainly not by Caicedo himself, who had agreed personal terms with the Blues and was in no mood to renege.
That prompted Chelsea to eventually find a breakthrough in talks with Brighton, paying a premium for the inconvenience caused and leaving Liverpool with a small amount of egg on their faces.
Some of the £15m in clauses might already have been activated by Caicedo’s two trophies in three seasons. But even if they are, the poor fella can only be the fourth biggest Premier League ever at best now.
CM: Elliot Anderson (Nottingham Forest to Manchester City, £116m)
The final possible Caicedo fee was instructive when it came to the future of Anderson, with Nottingham Forest driving a particularly hard bargain.
Evangelos Marinakis, backed by a strong World Cup summer for Anderson and the ever escalating premium for Premier League-ready central midfieldersthinned the field of suitors out with his demands until all that was left was just Manchester City.
Enzo Maresca will hope that the England international can rush through Rodri’s tactical fouling masterclass in pre-season.
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. 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.
By 2026, it can be safely assumed he wants to leave and, coincidentally, is now roundly despised in the country he works in. But silly sod signed a contract until 2032.
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 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.
Then came the spiral. Grealish did not score a single Manchester City goal in 2024 and was ostracised to the extent that a conscious uncoupling became inevitable.
An injury-hit loan at Everton has left Grealish in limbo with a year left on his Etihad contract.
AM: Florian Wirtz (Bayer Leverkusen to Liverpool, £100m)
The biggest spend ever in a single transfer window commenced with a couple of signings from Bayer Leverkusen. Wirtz cost slightly more than Jeremie Frimpong but will have welcomed the company.
Neither took to the challenge particularly well but a far bigger spotlight was inevitably placed on Wirtz, whose seven goals and ten assists in his first season didn’t come close to justifying the outlay.
The expectation will be that with a year of acclimatising to the country and league, Wirtz can show a great deal more soon. But he will have to adjust to a new manager too, with Arne Slot having paid for that frustrating first campaign.
CF: Alexander Isak (Newcastle to Liverpool, £125m)
It was a valuable tutorial in extricating oneself from a football club and nation state. Isak was not for sale until the precise moment he made himself unkeepable by pulling out of a pre-season friendly and subsequent tour, refusing to play for the club again, flying to Spain and training with former club Real Sociedad without permission and releasing a statement accusing the club of breaking promises.
Liverpool could never feign ignorance or innocence either, unsettling a rival team’s best player and relying on certain market factors – the constant Fabrizio Romano update button – to apply to pressure while they refused to budge on their valuation.
It worked abysmally for all parties, disrupting Newcastle’s preparations for a miserable season, disturbing Liverpool’s title defence and putting Isak out for most of the season with a significant karma injury.
Buying clubs: Chelsea (x4), Liverpool (x3), Manchester City (x3), Manchester United (x1)
Total cost: £1.068bn
Most expensive players to miss out:
Declan Rice (West Ham to Arsenal, £100m)
Romelu Lukaku (Inter to Chelsea, £97.5m)
Sandro Tonali (Newcastle to Spurs, £92.5m)
Paul Pogba (Juventus to Manchester United, £89.3m)
Mateus Fernandes (West Ham to Spurs, £85m)
Antony (Ajax to Manchester United, £82m)
Romelu Lukaku (Everton to Manchester United, £75m)
Jadon Sancho (Borussia Dortmund to Manchester United, £73m)
Nicolas Pepe (Lille to Arsenal, £72m)
Kai Havertz (Bayer Leverkusen to Chelsea, £71m)
