One of the many, many joys of a World Cup summer is the quietening of the transfer drumbeat. Yes, clubs are still out there looking to snare a star and there are always those who are unhealthily invested in transactions, as if winning the window carries as much kudos as winning silverware. For most of us, however, even the football obsessives, it is nice to have at least some distance from the tumult of it all, to dive back into the club game in early August with a fresher view on things.Now that the new domestic seasons are just around the bend, we can really get a sense of what this business was driving towards, of who looks to have judged things well, and who has been the easy mark of the window. With that in mind, let’s dive into five of the most intriguing transfers of the Premier League.1. Sandro Tonali to TottenhamThere was a widespread view within the game and among ordinary punters that Sandro Tonali’s $125 million move from Newcastle to Tottenham was the moment that transfer fees had become unmoored from common sense. It was a good, but not remarkable, midfielder moving for the sort of fee that a decade ago would have earned you the finest players on the planet. It was baffling. It did almost feel unmoored from reality. However, of course, it is not.Indeed, now that the Premier League operates under squad cost ratio (SCR) rules, the expenditure on Tonali and any other player in the division has never been more tangible. If Spurs or any other top-flight club spend over 85% of their revenue on their squad — specifically player and head coach wages, transfer amortisation and agent fees — then they could eventually face sanctions from the Premier League. In part, the reason that Tottenham could push the boat out so far on Tonali (or that Newcastle could demand such a sizeable fee) is that they are estimated to have comfortably the most SCR headroom of any of the Premier League’s big six, left over thanks to the transfer window parsimony and stadium-led revenue generation of Daniel Levy’s final years.
Tottenham had space to go big but Tonali’s amortized fee and wages is estimated to put around $38 million (£28 million) on their books for each of the five years of his contract. In an era of what is effectively a (seemingly quite soft) salary cap, one has to ask whether Spurs’ marquee addition is the sort that is worth spending five percent of their revenue on.
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And, well, he’s not really what you might understand a max player to be if you follow the NBA. Tonali does not transform Tottenham. He isn’t the best player on a great team. He passes the ball pretty well, at Newcastle he showed a greater focus on accuracy than cutting through the opposition lines. Apply pressure to him and, according to Opta statistics, he continues to pass the ball with only a shade below league-average accuracy. He is fairly strong without the ball too, ranking in the top 30 midfielders for duel success rate and ball recoveries last season.
Broadly speaking, the table above does a good job of showing you Tonali as a player. Some pleasantly green bits, a few oranges to have you worried, broadly evening out at a slightly above average Premier League midfielder whose greatest strength is his passing. And while that isn’t a balance sheet altering signing for most teams, it is for Tottenham. It is probably fair to say that they have had the worst passing midfield of any top-flight side for the last two seasons, particularly when James Maddison has been unavailable. The only teams whose midfielders completed fewer line-breaking passes last season than Spurs were Bournemouth (who had more direct and effective ways of getting upfield) and Wolves (who were bad). That they could not manipulate their way upfield is why this team came so close to the relegation trapdoor last season.
That is a problem worth paying nine figures to address. At 26, Tonali probably is not going to improve in new surroundings, he is unlikely to one day develop into one of the best midfielders in the Premier League (though his new teammate Mateus Fernandes might), but he is likely to be competent. Given all the difficulties Tottenham have had in his position, will it feel like nine figures well spent to get that sort of midfield play?
2. Alejandro Garnacho to Aston Villa
The stats still hold up. With Alejandro Garnacho at his third club in three seasons, loaned to Aston Villa from Chelsea, you would think that the 22-year-old had already blown it, his prodigious young talent gone to waste, this the just in in some ever-decreasing circles. It might prove to be the case, but goodness his expected goals and expected assists are still holding up. So are some other winger qualities too.
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Just look at the names Garnacho is keeping company with when we plot non-penalty expected goals (npxG) and expected assists (xA) on one axis and successful take-ons on the other. You wouldn’t get a one-year rental on Phil Foden, Anthony Gordon or Bukayo Saka. Your first instinct might be that what those players did as starters, Garnacho did off the bench. Quite the opposite. Admittedly, the sample is only 962 minutes, but in that time Garnacho averaged 0.6 npxG+xA per 90, almost as much as Rayan Cherki and the fourth best in the division.
You could even see some signs of footballing development in a player whose shot quantity dropped by a third while his xG only fell by 20%. Like many young wingers, on breaking through at Manchester United, Garnacho had a habit of pulling the trigger whenever a chance presented itself. With Chelsea, he was more considered, providing more shots for others and taking better ones himself.
The stats alone would tell you this is a player who might be looked on very differently by Chelsea fans were his finishing a little more consistent last season. And yet you cannot judge a player on numbers alone. The Stamford Bridge crowd grew frustrated at Garnacho’s diffident work without the ball last season. Questions of attitude that blew up at Manchester United were not eased last season when he is understood to have found it difficult to settle in the Chelsea dressing room.
Garnacho’s attitude appears to be a serious worry, but he is a 22-year-old multimillionaire. Some of them require a bit longer to develop maturity than others. Neither Manchester United nor Chelsea can say that any issues they had with the Argentine winger are isolated cases. You could imagine that a settled dressing room like Aston Villa’s, presided over by an empowered coach in Unai Emery, might be the making of Garnacho, who brings some of the pace and eye for goal that this team will be missing with Morgan Rogers having moved in the opposite direction. The talent is clearly there. Now it is time for Garnacho to translate it to output.
3. Ronald Araujo to Liverpool
Largely sidelined at Barcelona over the last two seasons, playing fewer minutes combined than he did in any of the three preceding campaigns, Ronald Araujo does not seem a particularly enchanting successor for Ibrahima Konate at Liverpool. Recent years have been trying for the Uruguayan, who made a string of errors in the 2025 Champions League final and was granted a leave of absence later that year as his mental health faltered. On his return, Araujo struggled for form.
And yet the best version of him seems a rather solid fit for a Premier League that ever more greatly prizes athleticism. At 28, Araujo ranks impressively on Gradient Sports’ physical metrics, 10th among La Liga center backs last season for sprint distance per 90 and 17th for accelerations, the latter all the more impressive given how much of the ball Barcelona had. His top speed last season was 32.55 km/h, significantly higher than most players in his position. Compared to his new teammates, it is about level with Virgil van Dijk and a long way ahead of Joe Gomez. Some of the greatest qualities that Konate brought to Liverpool were athletic. Araujo is a good approximation for them.
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He is also one of the leading scorers from set pieces in the last five La Liga seasons and has the second best duel success rate of players at Barcelona and Real Madrid in that time. The real questions revolve around his passing and how Araujo’s game at Barcelona might adapt to what Andoni Iraola might want at Liverpool. If the new manager wants his center backs to launch the ball as aggressively as his Bournemouth side did then there is not a lot of evidence from his Barcelona days that that is something Araujo does very well. It is simply not what is asked of a Barcelona center back. Still Virgil van Dijk should be very at ease with that task.
Ultimately, Araujo might be little more than a stopgap while Joe Gomez is out. Jeremy Jacquet and the currently injured Giovanni Leoni wait in the wings, 21 and 19 respectively, both the sort who will benefit from not having to play three times a week all through the season. Add in Araujo’s ability to cover the right back position, one it is not clear Jeremie Frimpong is tailor-made for, and you might have a decent depth piece.
4. Gonzalo Garcia to Fulham
It has been a summer of change at Craven Cottage. Manager Marco Silva, crucial in establishing Fulham as one of the more elegant sides in the Premier League’s lower midtable, left for his homeland and Benfica. Along with him went veteran striker Raul Jimenez and Harry Wilson, scorers of 19 of Fulham’s 47 top-flight goals last season, providers of 10 as well.
The task of succeeding some impressive figures in this club’s recent history falls on illustrious but rather untested names. Alvaro Arbeloa’s previous job in management was at Real Madrid, but the shepherding first of the B team and then running out last season with the seniors is his only coaching experience. Similarly, Jimenez’s spot at the point of attack is likely to be taken by Gonzalo Garcia, the tall and mobile 22-year-old who made 51 appearances for Madrid, scoring 13 times.
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A goal every 158 La Liga minutes last season, more than 0.5 npxG per 90, these are impressive numbers. They are also numbers that come with the caveat that he had a supply line of Kylian Mbappe and Jude Bellingham. Alex Iwobi has come on leaps and bounds in West London but, well… Garcia and fellow new signing Cesar Palacios are all going to have to deal with the culture shock that comes from being fringe players on a super team to important contributors on a team whose downside risk is relegation rather than merely qualifying for the Champions League.
Arbeloa, formerly a player at Liverpool and West Ham, may be able to guide his new players through a challenging new league, but Fulham could easily find themselves sliding away from safety if the signings they have made don’t hit.
5. Xaver Schlager to Nottingham Forest
Was there even a chance that Nottingham Forest might find one player to replace Elliot Anderson? They had all the money they needed to try, but there was a reason why Manchester City ponied up over $150 million for the man who looks like being their Rodri replacement. Last season Anderson led the Premier League on so many defensive metrics that you had yourself wondering about the data — his 306 ball recoveries were 96 more than anyone else — while also offering exceptional ball progression and top 60 in the division chance creation. If you wanted to find a replacement, according to Expecting Goals, you’d be looking for 2022-23 Toni Kroos or Jorginho in the season where the whole of Europe was transfixed by him.
Oliver Glasner, it seems, knows that he can only recreate Anderson in the aggregate. For some of the incisive passing, it is notable that James McAtee has often cropped up in deeper roles in their preseason friendlies with new signing Xaver Schlager tasked with mopping up in the double pivot of Forest’s new 3-4-2-1. The fit between the two Austrians looks an intriguing one. Both worked their way through the Red Bull system of high-pressing, spending time both in Salzburg and at RB Leipzig, but neither is quite so wedded to the aggressive out-of-possession approach that they need to be kamikaze.
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“I’m a hard-working player who likes to keep the game in the other half,” Schlager told reporters over the summer. “I also want to play football. I don’t like to kick and rush. Maybe I’m not as skilful as some, dribbling all the time — it’s too much risk! I’m not the quickest. But I want to play smart, I want to play fast, I want to be quick in my head. The most important thing is I want to make my teammates around me better.”
After so many summers of aggressive player turnover to reinforce their Premier League status, Nottingham Forest are showing a different side to recruitment in Schlager. Here is a player they can be reasonably sure is fitting their new manager, as is the case with Ousmane Diomande, the Sporting center back who should be at ease in a back three. This is Forest recruiting to a system rather than gathering as much talent as possible and going from there. It might serve them well.
