We have looked at the biggest Premier League transfers of the summer and calculated the biggest differences between value and transfer fee.
We have taken the market values from Transfermarkt, who do tend to under-value youngsters in particular, but the names are more important than the numbers.
5) Odysseas Vlachodimos (Nottingham Forest to Newcastle United)
We had it pegged as easily the most ridiculous of the PSR deals (and that’s when we thought it was worth £12m, not the final reported fee of £20m) and that is backed up by the transfermarkt figures, which have his market value pegged at about £6m. Which sounds about right for a 30-year-old third-choice goalkeeper.
Is has been reported that the Premier League will investigate this particular deal, with particular attention to why Newcastle massively overpaid for a goalkeeper they could have bought for £5m the year before, at pretty much exactly the time that Forest did an entirely separate deal for Elliot Anderson.
The overpay: £14m
4) Yankuba Minteh (Newcastle United to Brighton)
Newcastle have turned quite the profit on the Gambian winger in a year in which he never kicked a ball for the Magpies and instead scored 10 Eredivisie goals for Feyenoord. Had this been the mooted sale to Everton we would have asked questions about the £30m price tag for a 19-year-old but we all just assume Brighton know what they’re doing.
This might be just a case of TM undervaluing a the teenager; there is literally no indication right now whether Minteh is a stone-cold bargain or a £30m indulgence.
The overpay: £16m
3) Omari Kellyman (Aston Villa to Chelsea)
Is anybody even remotely pretending that this is not a dolly of a deal set up by Aston Villa and Chelsea to solve some PSR problems for two panicking clubs?
It’s unclear where Chelsea were when Villa had free rein to sign him for £600,000 from Derby in March 2022, since which he has played 148 first-team minutes – 90 in a Europa Conference League qualifying play-off – and seen his value increase by more than 3,000%.
“I’m buzzing to have put on the shirt and can’t wait to get started,” said Kellyman. Don’t hold your breath, fella.
The overpay: £19m
2) Archie Gray (Leeds United to Tottenham)
We might well look back in years to come and see this as the best £35m Tottenham have ever spent, but it’s still a f*** of a lot of money for an 18-year-old. Indeed, he’s one of the most expensive teenagers bought by a Premier League club.
And yet, this feels like a very, very good signing from Tottenham. Club all across Europe were interested in the versatile England Under-21 international and that initial overpay may well turn out to be an underpay. The boy looks good.
The overpay: £19.6m
1) Elliot Anderson (Nottingham Forest to Newcastle United)
Is he any good? There certainly seemed to be an absence of tears shed by fans when Anderson left his boyhood club for Nottingham Forest in a £35m deal which was coincidentally completed at the same time as the transfer at No 5) on this list.
We certainly would not have been surprised to see him leave for a newly promoted club for £15m so to see him move to another PSR-troubled club for £35m raises a few red flags. But he is young and he has potential so maybe this is a bargain in the making.
The overpay: £22.1m