Somewhere between June and September, English football lost the plot again, and this time it did so with more conviction than ever.

The English Premier League (EPL) closed its 2026 summer window having spent roughly 3.46 billion pounds, a new record for a division that seems constitutionally incapable of restraint. If you thought last year’s near three billion pounds binge was the ceiling, English clubs would like you to know there is no ceiling, only new floors.

What makes this window fascinating is not just the size of the numbers but how strange the shopping list looked. Manchester City, the division’s undisputed biggest spender, even though the actual title now sits at the Emirates, reinforced a squad that arguably did not need reinforcing, under a new manager who was not even in the building this time last year.

Chelsea, a club with no Champions League football to offer and a financial model best described as creative accounting with a smile, somehow still outspent half the division while also turning a profit. And Newcastle United, for the second summer running, sold their best players and called it a rebuild.

Let us start where the real money went.

The player transfer market for the Premier League closed on September 1. Here’s the shopping haul

The player transfer market for the Premier League closed on September 1. Here’s the shopping haul

City equalled the outright British transfer record by paying Chelsea 125 million pounds for Argentine Enzo Fernandez, matching the fee Liverpool paid Newcastle for Swede Alexander Isak a year earlier. It was also the first real statement of the Enzo Maresca era at the Etihad, City’s new manager having replaced Pep Guardiola over the summer, and having previously coached Fernandez at Chelsea.

Chelsea, who had bought Fernandez for 107 million pounds from Benfica back in 2023, somehow still turned a profit on him three years later, and used that windfall to fund a........

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