Exclusive: Coutinho, Ronaldo, Bale, Grealish and other mega transfers to push Premier League spending to £55bn by 2050
Premier League clubs’ spending sprees will amount somewhere close to £300m annually in the next 30 years, according to new research that was shared with Morning Wire this afternoon.
The average outlay per club is set to be £286,996,502 in 2050, an increase of 135.99 per cent, while the average fee paid by top-flight clubs will sit at £74,092,200.
Meanwhile, total cumulative transfer spending of EPL clubs will likely surpass £55bn at the same point, according to data compiled by Transfers Remixed and MobileWins.
Since the league’s inaugural season in 1992-1993, there has been a 2529 per cent increase in the amount spent by the biggest spending club, and similarly, a 2150 per cent jump in the most expensive player signed by the biggest spending club.
Transfers Remixed by MobileWins re-mastered the English top-flight’s most lucrative and infamous transfers, assessing who would be the most expensive in today’s market, projected estimated values in 2050, and has rewound the clock to look at hypothetical fees at the turn of the century.
Most expensive transfers
Brazilian midfielder Phillipe Coutinho, widely regarded as the best business ever conducted by an EPL club, with Liverpool paying just £8.7m in 2013, is the most expensive player in today’s market.
His £105m transfer to Barcelona in 2018 is equivalent to £112,954,380 in 2021, and a colossal £266,572,336 in 2050.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Paul Pogba, Grealish and Eden Hazard make up the top six, and represent the only transfers that would bank their selling clubs in excess of £200m in 2050.
Sam Omerod, Manchester City manager in 1900, would have paid £759,957 for British record signing Jack Grealish in 1900, while Jadon Sancho would have cost United just over half a million.
In 2050, City and United would have to spend £236m and £172m respectively to land their men.
Grealish’s reported £369,231-a-week would have earned him £168,020 at the start of the Premier League era.
In the present day, the Manchester pair’s combined spend would purchase 54 properties in the lavish London suburb of Knightsbridge, in 1900 they could have secured themselves a small town, or 4,966 average capital dwellings.
Nicholas Anelka’s switch to Real Madrid in 1999 leads the way in terms of the costliest pre-2000 transfers. His fee of £40,562,775 in today’s market puts him 30th overall, ahead of record Premier League goal-scorer Alan Shearer, Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Andy Cole.
Gareth Southgate, who moved from Crystal Palace to Aston Villa in 1995, would have cost less than £70,000 in 1900, but fast forward 150 years and the England manager would set you back £16.34m.
Gary Lineker would have cost Barcelona £21,102,514.33 if their ultimately successful attempt to prise him from Everton had come 36 years later.