Liam Delap's big move to Nottingham Forest came with a fee that didn't make sense given his poor spell at Chelsea. Welcome to the new era of wild transfer spending and accounting.

Let's play a little Premier League numbers game, but the only guarantee is that the numbers won't add up. It involves a deal worth up to £85 million for Sávio, a Manchester City squad player who joined Tottenham, a £50m transfer to Nottingham Forest for Liam Delap following an injury-hit year at Chelsea, and Tottenham's £85m deal for West Ham's Mateus Fernandes, a player whose unenviable claim to fame was that he suffered successive relegations with the Hammers and Southampton.

By the time the 2026 summer transfer window closed Tuesday, the 20 Premier League teams had spent just over £3.4 billion combined on new signings -- a record that eclipsed last year's total of £3.2bn -- with four players (Enzo Fernández and Anderson to Man City, Bradley Barcola to Liverpool, Rogers to Chelsea) all moving for transfer fees in excess of £100m. But rewind to early July, and note the Annual Review of Football Finance published by Deloitte detailed that pre-tax losses among the Premier League's clubs had rocketed by more than 600%, with collective losses of £948m in the 2024-25 season.

In April, Chelsea announced pre-tax losses of £262m -- a Premier League record -- with Spurs reporting a pre-tax loss of £120.6 million, and Manchester United reporting a loss of £39.7m. Even Manchester City posted losses of £9.m; of the Big Six, only Liverpool recorded a profit of just £15.2m. So it is against that backdrop that this summer's inexplicable spending has played out. Man City, Chelsea and Spurs have all spent over £300m this summer -- City set a new Premier League record by spending £458m -- but those headline figures have largely been offset by hefty incoming transfer fees. "If you look at the Premier League, a lot of the transfer money spent by those clubs is staying in the Premier League," a former sporting director told ESPN. "So that is driving up prices because despite the annual losses, clubs know that they each have cash flowing around due to their transfer dealings."