Transfer deadline day: Premier League clubs armed with cash and desperate for new signings are being exploited abroad

The real story of the explosion of spending power in English football in 2016 is not even told by Manchester United breaking the world transfer record by signing Paul Pogba for £89.3m, as significant as that was. Nor is it told in Manchester City paying £47.5m for John Stones. Rich clubs have always paid big money for top talent.

The real story lies in less good players, out of their early 20s, being signed by mid-table clubs for fees that few English club would have paid for anyone less than 10 years ago. This is the summer of Crystal Palace paying £27m for Christian Benteke, Everton paying £25m for Yannick Bolasie and West Ham United paying £20m for Andre Ayew. It is the biggest recalibration of transfer fees in English football history and is has transformed the playing field for everyone in England, even those clubs with no interest in being dragged into the inflationary spiral.

This has been the summer where the stakes have been raised again in the win or bust game of Championship football. Clubs in England’s second tier are now able to pay more in salary and wages than many Champions League sides in mid-ranking European leagues. Three players – Matt Ritchie, Dwight Gayle and Ross McCormack - were signed by Championship clubs this summer for eight-figure fees. No club in Portugal or the Netherlands has paid that much money for anyone yet.

What this means is that the whole of the top end of English football is awash with money and the promise of money. Even those who don’t have it yet are acting as if they do. This has had a levelling effect on the Premier League. It is not so much a case of haves and have-nots any more, but haves and have-mores. This is why the transfer market has been a seller’s market this year, with clubs from outside the financial elite able to say no to the rich teams. Everton refused to sell Romelu Lukaku to Chelsea despite the prospect of making £70m from doing so. West Ham have no incentive to sell Dimitri Payet, nor do Crystal Palace with Wilfried Zaha. West Bromwich Albion have hung on to Saido Berahino despite very persuasive reasons to say goodbye.

This is the context for mid-table teams being able to buy mid-table players for bigger fees than ever before. “The money that is in the game now is throughout the Premier League,” explains Leon Angel, chairman of Base Soccer agency. “In the past, if you wanted to buy a player for £30m or even £20m, that would be a top player and you would probably be competing with the top six clubs or a foreign team. But now, because the money is so big, every club can go for a £20m or £30m player.”

It should be no real surprise that Premier League spending has exploded as it has this summer. As was heralded long in advance, this is the first year of the new three-year TV rights cycle, which Sky Sports and BT Sport have paid a combined £5.1bn for. That is a 71 per cent increase on the previous cycle and all that money is being divided up between the teams. The international TV deals for 2016-19 are set to pass £3bn, and by the next cycle they will be even higher.

“The revenue split share between domestic and international TV deals is getting closer to equalisation,” explains Daniel Geey, sports lawyer at Sheridans law firm. “That may be in the next round. Overseas core markets could be more valuable in long run than the historically buoyant UK market.”

Premier League football, clearly, is more commercially attractive than it has ever been before. While the rise in broadcasting revenue has been exponential, sponsorship money is increasing almost as quickly. When Chelsea signed their kit deal with adidas in 2013 it was, at £30m per year, the second biggest in the world. Since then, though, the size of deals has shot up. Chelsea’s new deal with Nike is worth £60m per year. Manchester United’s deal with adidas, signed in 2014, is worth £75m per year. Then there is the rise of sponsorship markets that did not even exist five years ago. Chelsea have a new deal with Carabao, a Thai energy drink, who sponsor their training kit, and pay £10m per year for the privilege.

From broadcasting and commercial revenue, then, Premier League clubs’ turnover has exploded. And as much as clubs might like to keep that to themselves, English football has never been very good at restricting the flow of money out of it, even in the era of financial fair play. So when Premier League teams try to buy someone, whether from England or abroad, the price shoots up. Because the Premier League club can afford to pay it. And because teams are so desperate to buy new players, and so able to pay, they will largely cough up whatever is asked of them.

This is a dynamic that has infuriated Arsene Wenger, and he railed against it at a press conference earlier this month. “Today in Europe you have two markets, one for the English clubs and one for the rest of Europe,” he said. “When the buyer is English, that multiplies the transfer by two, three or sometimes by 10. If an English club does not come in for a player he is worth £5m. If an English club comes in he is worth £35m, £40m or £50m. I expected this transfer market to be easier than ever, but it was more difficult than ever. If you have an English passport, you hit these big prices.”

But English clubs are able to pay over the odds, and many of them have been doing so. All it takes is for a few times to pay the new prices, and soon enough everybody is obliged to, or else they miss out on the talent.

“If the money that the clubs are getting goes up 40 per cent, it is very difficult to keep salaries down, and it becomes a vicious circle,” explains Angel. “There are clubs who are trying to manage the business well, not pay over the odds and not pay big salaries unnecessarily. But they will get into a difficult situation where unless you can guarantee success, players will demand more. The money going up at lower and mid-table teams striving for success will push it up through throughout the league.”

Of course teams in the bottom half of the Premier League are so desperate to stay up that they will take risks in the transfer market. Even in the Championship, teams will buy £10m players and pay them £50,000 per week just to have a swing at promotion. There is no way they can bring in enough money to cover those costs, leading to possible FFP trouble if they are not successful. But the lure of Premier League is so strong that clubs would rather go for it.

The main question as teams start to think about the 2017 window and beyond is whether this summer will be repeated again. As long as the clubs are earning money they will spend it. The only thing they have to fear is a bubble in the TV rights market. With Sky and BT desperate to dominate the UK broadband market, and foreign rights going for more money than ever, there is no sign of a slow-down yet. Next year will be same, only more so.