Newcastle should take a few minutes out during negotiations over selling Alexander Isak to ask Liverpool how best – and how worst – to reinvest the proceeds.
Isak is said to be ‘furious’ with Newcastle and has even been accused of ‘starting to check out’ towards the end of last season.
It is thought that Liverpool will ramp up their attempts to procure the Swede from St James’ Park once the clever sale of Luis Diaz to Bayern Munich has been sanctioned.
Newcastle remain steadfast in their desire to keep Isak but his omission from the squad for their pre-season tour of the Far East was a significant moment in the summer-long saga, the first meaningful weakening of the Magpies’ position.
But Liverpool will still have to make it worth the hassle with a momentous and likely record-breaking financial package – certainly the biggest ever between two Premier League clubs at the very least.
That would grant Newcastle a far bigger budget to reinvest across a Champions League squad which has only had Anthony Elanga added this summer due to an increasingly humorous list of rejections from top targets.
Such money can be as much a blessing as it is a curse, as these eclectic examples show. The biggest Premier League sales ever, and what those fees were subsequently spent on, are below.
Chelsea: Eden Hazard – £143m
Mateo Kovacic – £40.2m
Hakim Ziyech – £ 33.3M
Timo Werner – £47.5m
Ben Chilwell – £45m
Malang Sarr – Free
Thiago Silva – free
You Havertz – £ 72m
Edouard Mendy – £22m
Total: £ 40.2M/£ 259m
An awkwardly-timed transfer ban prevented Chelsea from properly investing their Hazard money back into the squad immediately, although by the time Frank Lampard was given access to those funds a year later, the hit-rate was sub-optimal at best.
That Hazard deal really was ridiculous; Chelsea were still receiving add-on payments when he was retired and well over a year after his last professional game.
Liverpool: Philippe Coutinho – £142m
Virgil van Dijk – £ 75m
Naby oasis – £ 52.75m
Fabinho – £ 43m
XHer Shaker is £ 13.5m
Alisson – £67m
Total: £75m/£251.25m
Liverpool put on an absolute transfer masterclass in 2018, extracting daft money from Barcelona for an excellent but expendable Coutinho and still managing to arguably underpay for four of their next five signings despite the selling clubs knowing they had a boosted budget.
A world-record fee for Van Dijk was immediately offset and the Dutchman helped take them to the Champions League final within a matter of months; Fabinho, Alisson and even Shaqiri joined in the summer and played crucial roles in their European coronation and Premier League success.
The Coutinho Money and Liverpool’s use of it has gone down in history for a reason.
Brighton: Moises Caicedo – £100m rising to £115m
Joao Pedro – £ 30m
James Milner – free
Mahmoud Dahoud – Free
Bart Verbruggen – £ 16.3m
Igor – £ 14.5m
Carlos Baleba – £23.2m
Ansu Followers – Loan
Total: £84m
Once the dust settled following Liverpool and Chelsea’s embarrassing transfer stand-off of summer 2023the winner was ultimately Brighton. It usually is.
Caicedo had reached his peak value with the Seagulls and there were buyers whose funds were matched only by their desperation to sign a Premier League midfield panacea.
Long before the money landed in their bank account, Brighton had popped Paul Barber’s laptop open to sign Caicedo’s replacement in Baleba, their future first-choice keeper in Verbruggen and a player they would sell for almost twice as much a couple of years later in Pedro.
Igor was one of those few speculative moves which do not pay off but in general Brighton absorbed another substantial sale on their terms like only they can.
West Ham: Declan Rice – £100m rising to £105m
Edson Alvarez – £32.8m
James Ward-Prowse – £30m
Konstantinos Mavropanos – £ 20m
Mohammed Kudus – £38m
Andy Irving – undisclosed
Total: £120.8m
West Ham drew out their inevitable extraction of a potential British record fee from Arsenal to such an extent that their first signing as Conference League champions was made two days before the start of the Premier League season.
David Moyes said the Hammers couldn’t “plan anything really” until the Rice situation was sorted but it did seem like a strange way to conduct business.
And while the signings of Alvarez, Ward-Prowse and Kudus felt exciting and filled a great many of the voids left behind by their captain and talisman, West Ham have sold one and would be open to offloading the other two a couple of years later.
Aston Villa: Jack Grealish – £100m
MIU BUARDIA – £ 33M
Ashley Young – free
Leon Bailey – £30m
Danny Ings – £25m
Total: £88m
“It was never our intention to replace Jack with one footballer; our strategy was to analyse and break down Jack’s key attributes – his creativity, his assists and goals – and find those qualities and others in three forward players,” said chief executive Christian Purslow.
But even the combined efforts of Buendia, Bailey and Ings – the latter being one of the great transfers that came out of absolutely nowhere – summarily failed to replicate the impact and importance of the departed Villa captain.
Tottenham: Harry Kane – £86.4m rising to £100m
Pedro Porro – £ 39m
Dejan Kulusevski – £ 25.6m
Guglielmo Vicario – £ 17.2m
James Maddison – £40m
Manor Solomon – free
Ashley Phillips – £2m
Micky van de Ven – £ 34.5m
Alejo Veliz – £ 13m
Brennan Johnson – £47.5m
Total: £218.8m
After scoring 280 goals in 435 appearances across nine full trophyless seasons, the last of which saw him net 30 times for a Spurs side which finished 8th and sacked two managers, Kane was finally granted his release by Daniel Levy.
The emergence of a rich European suitor who could take Kane as far away as possible so as to not inflict any damage on his boyhood club was the deal-breaker as Spurs finally stepped aside to let their record scorer go.
It was a necessary part of the great Ange Postecoglou rebuild, with more than twice the possible final Kane fee chucked back into a squad in dire need of reinforcements across the board.
Spurs finished 5th to qualify for a Europa League they would win and, so far in summer 2025, squander to hilarious and predictable levels.
Tottenham: Gareth Bale – £ 85.3m
Paulinho – £ 17m
Nacer Chadli – £ 7M
Roberto Soldado – £ 26m
Etienne Capoue – £ 9m
Vlad Chiricheș – £ 8.5m
Christian Eriksen – £ 11.5m
Erik Lamela – £ 30m
Total: £109m
Daniel Levy tried to counter the swollen valuations clubs face when trying to spend huge transfer windfalls, splashing all of the Bale money on The Magnificent Seven before the Welshman had even completed his move to Real Madrid.
It did not work all that well, with Eriksen the only unqualified success and “massive arguments” behind the scenes leading to the sacking of Andre Villas-Boas.
Manchester United: Cristiano Ronaldo – £80m
Antonio Valencia – £ 16m
Michael Owen – free
Gabriel Obertan – £3m
Mame Biram Diouf – £4.5m
Total: £23.5m
“The money is there if I want to use it. The money was there in the summer if I wanted to use it,” said Sir Alex Ferguson in December 2009, desperately trying to shield those frugal Glazers by later adding: “I have no criticism of the owners over money because none is justified. They’ve given me £20m for three players already.”
Thank you so much for my brand new Gabriel Obertan, glorious overlords.
The Manchester United manager had targeted Karim Benzema and Franck Ribery to help replace Ronaldo before settling for Owen and complaining that “the prices we were quoted for players were not reasonable” in a market that was “inflated” by Real Madrid and Manchester City’s thriftlessness.
Leicester: Harry Maguire – £80m
James Justin – £8m
Ayoze Perez – £30m
Youri Tielemans – £40m
George Hirst – £1m
Dennis praet – £ 18m
Total: £97m
After squeezing what remains a record fee out of Manchester UnitedLeicester spread their jackpot across every area of their squad to mixed results. The Foxes built on consecutive finishes of 9th with Maguire in the side to produce back-to-back Champions League qualification challenges without him, ultimately coming 5th both times.
Southampton: Virgil van Dijk – £75m
Guido Carrillo – £ 19.2m
Stuart Armstrong – £7m
Mohamed Elyounoussi – £16m
Angus Gunn – £10m
Jannik Vestergaard – £ 18m
Danny Ings – loan
Total: £ 19.2M/£ 70.2M
Southampton put on a clinic on how not to redistribute a substantial transfer fee in the January 2018 window, making Guido Carrillo (no goals in 10 games) their record signing as they bid farewell to Van Dijk.
The subsequent summer was slightly better but even then their best addition was a loanee from Liverpool, who presumably felt a little guilty.
Everton: Romelu Lukaku – £75m
Jordan Pickford – £25m
Davy Klaassen – £ 23.6m
Henry is waiting for – £7m
Sandro Ramirez – £5.2m
Michael Keane – £25m
Wayne Rooney – free
Josh Bowler – £1.5m
Cuco Martina – free
Gylfi Sigurdsson – £ 40m
Nikola Vlasic – £ 8m
Total £133.8m
Everton are still feeling the financial effects of their resounding transfer incompetence in the 2017/18 season, when their reaction to selling a guaranteed 20-goal-a-season striker was to bring in loads of No.10s to create chances for a centre-forward they no longer had.
Mind you, signing Cenk Tosun for £27.5m in January hardly helped.
Liverpool: Luis Suarez – £ 75m
Rickie Lambert – £4m
Adam Lallana – £25m
Emre Can – £10m
Lazar Markovic – £20m
Leave Lovren – £ 20m
Divock Origi – £10m
Alberto Moreno – £ 12m
Mario Balotelli – £ 16m
Total: £117m
“Look at Tottenham. If you spend more than £100million, you expect to be challenging for the league,” is perhaps the single most disastrous sentence ever uttered by an eminently quotable Premier League manager.
An attempt to shift the increasing focus and pressure on Liverpool not only backfired immediately – their title hopes imploded in that game against Chelsea two days later – but it created an unnecessary rod for the club’s back which sat uncomfortably all summer.
As poorly as Tottenham executed their post-Bale spend, Liverpool’s effort to improve their squad with the Suarez money a year later was risible.
Manchester United: Romelu Lukaku – £74m
Daniel James – £15m
Aaron Wan – £ 45M
Harry Maguire – £80m
Total: £140m
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer decided he needed a young, hungry, British core when given the permanent Manchester United reins, which is hardly surprising when he built much of his early managerial ethos around the Class of ’92 and Nou Camp-based corners because original thought is for nerds.
The mere thought of a Sean Longstaff-Scott McTominay central midfield was enough to drive supporters to the point of impotent fury in 2019; by 2025 the former is the secret to survival for Leeds and the latter is Naples royalty.
Leicester: Wesley Fofana – £70m
Alex Smithies – free
Wout Faes – £15m
Victor Kristiansen – £ 13.1m
Tete – loan
Harry Souttar – £15m
Total: £15m/£43.1m
A combination of Chelsea playing summer-long silly beggars over Fofana and Leicester tightening the purse strings to uncomfortable levels restricted the Foxes to a dismal and faintly depressing summer window which not even additional investment in the winter could salvage. The foundations for relegation were established.
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