Premier League clubs have committed £2.14bn in this summer's transfer window, with the season opening this week and the deadline still a fortnight away on 1 September. That total already exceeds the full summer outlay in 2024 (£1.98bn), 2022 (£1.94bn), 2021 (£1.13bn) and 2020 (£1.32bn). Only 2023 (£2.36bn) and last summer's record £3.14bn sit above it, and with two weeks of trading left another record cannot be ruled out.
The size of the number is the least interesting thing about it. The more revealing figure is where the money went.
Almost £785m of this summer's spending has gone on transfers between one English top-flight club and another. Eight of the twelve biggest Premier League signings so far fall into that category, and in-house business now accounts for almost a third of everything the division has spent. As a proportion that is not unprecedented, 35.9% of spending stayed within the league last season and 37% did so in 2017-18, but the cash sums involved are far larger. Intra-league spending reached £1.29bn last season, the highest summer figure since 2016.
The six are shopping at the fourteen