The Chelsea Mashup: January window transfers: find the spends by club and year

Friday, 1 February 2013

January window transfers: find the spends by club and year

Premier League clubs spent a total of £117m in this year's January transfer window. See how that breaks down by club and year
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As the deadline on the January transfer window came to a close last night Premier League clubs spent £117m, significantly more than last year but still short of the record £225m spent in 2011.

Figures gathered by Guardian Sport show that the total January spend by Premier League clubs came to a total of £117m. Click on the line chart below to see the total January spends by year.

So what is the big news? Paul Doyle on the Guardian live blog summed it up as this:

The transfer window has closed. David Beckham is a PSG player. Nacho Monreal has just become an Arsenal player. Chris Samba, Jermaine Jenas and Andros Towsend are QPR players. Jack Butland is a Stoke goalkeeper. Peter Odemwingie has turned into a pumpkin.

David Beckham became the big talking point yesterday when he announced not only a move to the Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain, but that he plans to donate all his wages from his five-month contract to charity.

How did the spending break down? In a similar pattern to last year, the majority of the money was spent on players from outside England (62%). In 2012 a quarter of the money went to other Premier Leagues, this dropped to 21% this year. Only 17% of the January transfer window spend this year trickled down to the Football League. The chart above shows how the spending breaks down.

Once again Queens Park Rangers were the biggest net spenders with Liverpool following close behind. Harry Redknapp broke QPR's transfer record by signing Christopher Samba for £12.5m - the highest outright spend for a player in the 2013 January transfer window. The two richest clubs in the league, Chelsea and Manchester City, are at the opposite end of the table. The chart above shows the net gains or losses by club.

With data acquired from the Guardian Sports team we have broken down the January transfer spend by club and over the years, it is also available to download as a spreadsheet. What can you do with this data?