Highlights

• Arsenal spent just over £200m in the summer of 2023 in a bid to beat Manchester City for the title and broke their record transfer fee in the process.
• Tottenham Hotspur also spent heavily in the summer of 2023 in order to build a squad capable of playing new manager Ange Postecoglou's style of football.
• Chelsea have spent almost £1bn since Todd Boehly became owner, and boast the top three highest transfer spends in Premier League history.

The transfer window is one of the most exciting times for a football fan. They get to sit back and watch clubs scrabble around, offering money left, right and centre for players that they believe will be the solution to all their problems.

The transfer market has grown more and more wild over the years and, as a result, the amount of money these clubs are willing to splash has also reached absurd levels. The British record transfer fee has been broken three times in the last 11 years and the £100m mark has been breached five times since 2018.

The 2023/24 season saw the first two clubs, Everton and Nottingham Forest, punished under the Financial Fair Play regulations first introduced to the Premier League in 2013. Consequently, January 2024 saw clubs behaving much more tentatively in the transfer market.

It will be interesting to see if a similar situation happens and there is less major transfer activity in the 2024 summer window than we have seen in recent years. Here are the ten biggest spends by one club in a single transfer window in Premier League history.

10 Manchester City

£178.3m - 2015/16 summer window

Manchester City endured a difficult 2014/15 campaign by their usual standards, finishing well short of runaway champions Chelsea, and exiting all other cup competitions earlier than they would have liked. In response, the acquisitions made in the 2015 summer window would make up the spine of their dominant sides under Pep Guardiola in years to come.

Kevin de Bruyne was the standout signing, arriving off the back of a remarkable season with Wolfsburg for a fee of £65.1m, and he would go on to have a stellar career at the Etihad Stadium, establishing himself as arguably the best midfielder in the world. Raheem Sterling also became the most expensive Englishman of all time when he signed from Liverpool for £54.5m, and another key addition was Nicolas Otamendi, who was acquired from Valencia for £38.1m.

9 Arsenal

£201.4m - 2023/24 summer window

Arsenal were in pole position for their first league title in 19 years for much of the 2022/23 season, but the overwhelming quality of Man City finally caught up with them towards the end, and they were forced to settle for second place. In the summer of 2023, Mikel Arteta sought to make the necessary additions to transform his team from title challengers into title winners.

Most notably, the Gunners broke their transfer record to snap up midfielder Declan Rice from West Ham for £100m. The acquisition of Chelsea's Kai Havertz for £64.2m raised a few eyebrows, but the German weighed in with 13 goals in all competitions during the 2023/24 campaign, and while Jurrien Timber seemed an astute purchase, he missed almost the entire season through injury.

GIVEMESPORT Key Statistic: The £100m signing of Declan Rice makes him the second-most expensive English player of all time, behind only Jack Grealish, who was signed by Manchester City for £100.7m in 2021.

8 Manchester United

£205.9m - 2022/23 summer window

Manchester United appointed Ajax boss Erik ten Hag as their manager in April 2022, and the Dutchman was given free rein that summer to mold the Red Devils in his own image. The summer headlines were dominated by a lengthy, but ultimately unsuccessful, pursuit of his former player Frenkie de Jong, but ten Hag was still able to bring in several players he'd worked with in the past.

Brazilian winger Antony was signed for a hefty £81.4m fee which, as of May 2024, is a price tag he's failed to live up to, while experienced Casemiro joined from Real Madrid for £60.5m. Diminutive centre-back Lisandro Martinez was another addition from Ajax and full-back Tyrell Malacia also made the move from PSV to United that summer.

7 Manchester City

£206.6m - 2023/24 summer window

As Arsenal looked to greatly strengthen their squad in a bid to try and catch up with Man City, the summer of 2023 provided Pep Guardiola's side with the task of cancelling out any progress made by the Gunners. As it turned out, the Citizens ended up splashing out even more cash than their North London counterparts.

Josko Gvardiol, who had greatly impressed at the 2022 World Cup with Croatia, became the most expensive defender in football history when he was signed from RB Leipzig for £77.1m. Along with him came the costly purchases of Matheus Nunes and Jeremy Doku from Wolves and Stade Rennais respectively, while Mateo Kovacic was also picked up from Chelsea for a relatively modest £24.9m.

6 Tottenham Hotspur

£211.7m - 2023/24 summer window

Tottenham Hotspur appointed Ange Postecoglou as their manager in the summer of 2023, and the Australian's arrival meant there were going to be dramatic changes to Spurs' playing style from the conservative approach of his predecessor, Antonio Conte. Therefore, chairman Daniel Levy permitted Postecoglou to spend big in the summer to acquire the players needed to effectively play his brand of football, as well as in a bid to soften the blow of Harry Kane's departure to Bayern Munich.

Winger Brennan Johnson was signed from Nottingham Forest, attacking midfielder James Maddison poached from relegated Leicester City and elegant defender Micky van de Ven plucked from Wolfsburg. Elsewhere, Pedro Porro and Dejan Kulusevski's loan moves were made permanent for hefty fees and Empoli goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario was snapped up for just £15.8m.

5 Chelsea

£211.8m - 2020/21 summer window

Chelsea were struck with a transfer ban in 2019, meaning they had to make their way through the 2019/10 season mostly relying on homegrown talent and unable to compensate for the loss of star player Eden Hazard, who had just signed for Real Madrid. As a result, once the ban was lifted, the Blues made up for lost time with a highly expensive transfer window.

Frank Lampard's side forked out £68.5m to procure Kai Havertz from Bayer Leverkusen, while Timo Werner also left Germany for Stamford Bridge for a fee of £45.4m. Just under £100m was dished out to sign Leicester City left-back Ben Chilwell, Ajax attacker Hakim Ziyech and Stade Rennais goalkeeper Edouard Mendy, and yet it was the free transfer addition of Thiago Silva that probably ended up being Chelsea's best bit of business that summer.

4 Manchester City

£212.9m - 2017/18 summer window

Pep Guardiola's first season (2016/17) in the Manchester City dugout didn't quite go as planned, and so the Citizens embarked on a huge spending spree in the summer of 2017 in a bid to return to winning ways. Kyle Walker and Bernardo Silva were arguably the two best bits of business, joining from Tottenham and Monaco respectively for a combined fee of £88m.

Benfica's Ederson was also snapped up in a bid to solve City's goalkeeping woes, and the Brazilian arrived along with Danilo, Benjamin Mendy and Douglas Luiz in a total transfer outlay of just under €250m. The gamble paid off as Man City enjoyed a record-breaking title-winning season, becoming the first team to win the Premier League with 100 points.

3 Chelsea

£257.7m - 2022/23 summer window

We now reach the portion of the list that is entirely dominated by Chelsea's ludicrous spending under the ownership of Todd Boehly. After the American took control of the West London outfit in 2022, his first-ever transfer window was the first to break the £250m mark in Premier League history.

Leicester City centre-back Wesley Fofana was signed for £68.9m, Marc Cucurella joined from Brighton for £60m and Raheem Sterling was plucked from Manchester City for £48.1m. Grizzled centre-back Kalidou Koulibaly was picked up for £36m along with Barcelona striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and youngsters Carney Chukwuemeka and Cesare Casadei for a combined total of £38.3m.

2 Chelsea

£282.4m - 2022/23 winter window

Somehow, despite spending an obscene amount of money in the summer of 2022, Chelsea were far from done and spent even heavily in the winter window. The season hadn't panned out as Boehly would have hoped, with the Blues slumped in eighth place at the beginning of January, and so he turned back to the market in order to strengthen the squad even further.

Enzo Fernandez had just been one of the stars of the 2022 World Cup, and as his stock had never been higher, Chelsea were forced to part with £103.7m to bring the midfielder to Stamford Bridge. Almost £140m was also splashed out to sign hot prospects Mykhaylo Mudryk, Benoit Badiashile, Noni Madueke and Malo Gusto.

1 Chelsea

£400.1m - 2023/24 summer window

Even after spending over €600m across the 2022/23 season, Chelsea still finished in an extremely disappointing 12th place in the league. The summer of 2023 saw them able to offload a lot of their deadwood, particularly to teams in Saudi Arabia, and after having raised over £200m in player sales, they re-invested that money into another attempt to improve the squad.

Moises Caicedo was the most expensive purchase, costing £99.4m to sign from Brighton, but Cole Palmer was by far the best signing, scoring over 20 goals in his debut season after leaving Manchester City. Nicolas Jackson, Romeo Lavia, Christopher Nkunku, Axel Diasi and Robert Sanchez were all brought in to bolster the first team as Chelsea's total outlay for the summer came to an extraordinary total of just over £400m.

All transfer fees in this article are taken from Transfermarkt