Ken Early: Premier League’s financial dominance not enough to lure European elites

The 2026 summer transfer window is not yet officially the biggest in Premier League history – at the time of writing, that is still the summer of 2025 – but it is probably the strangest.The league’s financial dominance has never been more pronounced. Of the top 20 most expensive transfers in the world during this summer window, 14 involved a buying club in the Premier League. There were five non-Premier League buyers: Real Madrid (Yan Diomande from Leipzig), Barcelona (Anthony Gordon from Newcastle and Rodri from Manchester City), Milan (Gonçalo Ramos from PSG) and two clubs in the Saudi league.The new development is that increasingly the biggest-money transfers are an all-Premier League affair. In 11 of the top 20 transfers in the world, both the buying and the selling club were in the Premier League. And of the top 20 most expensive signings made by Premier League clubs so far in this window, 15 were players who were already in the league last season.This might be why the transfer frenzy is accompanied by a strange sense of stagnation, that all this sound and fury is signifying not very much. For all the money that has been spent – there have been eight Premier League deals for £75 million (€87.6 million) or more, as many as in the last five summers put together – very little fresh top-tier talent has arrived. Bradley Barcola (PSG to Liverpool) is the only established star coming to the league from a top club abroad.READ MOREPremier League clubs have not stopped buying from elsewhere; of the deals ranked 21 to 40, 16 involve players signed from outside the league. But when it comes to the very biggest fees, they are increasingly reluctant to risk them on players who have no experience of the league.Bradley Barcola has joined Liverpool from Paris Saint-Germain. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA Another factor is that the very best players – the elites for whom Premier League clubs would be ready to pay Morgan Rogers-type transfer fees – don’t want to come. This class of player is already good enough to play for one of the small handful of non-Premier League clubs that can pay Premier League wages, and can afford to take a more holistic view of what’s on offer in the English top flight.Vinícius Júnior and Julián Alvarez both had the chance to join Arsenal this summer, but preferred to stay in La Liga. If Barcola had not found himself too often on the bench as PSG’s fourth-ranking forward, maybe he too would have stayed put.[ Parochial triumphalism can’t keep papering over Celtic’s European failuresOpens in new window ]The visit of Brighton to Stamford Bridge pitted the club that is best at transfers against the club that is most fascinated by them. The game was watched by Carlo Ancelotti and Thomas Tuchel, sitting together in the stand. Now coaching Brazil and England respectively, they hung on to their highly-paid national team jobs after the World Cup despite making big mistakes in the tournament.The action that played out on the pitch confronted them with two of the biggest.Carlo Ancelotti and Thomas Tuchel at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. Photograph: John Walton/PA Ancelotti decided to leave João Pedro at home so he could include guys like the injured, overweight Neymar and the Brentford centre-forward Igor Thiago, whose performance in the first half of Brazil’s opening game sparked national indignation.Tuchel for his part decided that he’d rather have a guy like Noni Madueke in his squad than Cole Palmer. The call was true to the traditional English brawn-over-brains approach that Tuchel was supposed to be helping England move away from.But Brazil and England’s loss turns out to be Chelsea’s gain. The blunders of the two ex-Chelsea managers have handed their old club an advantage in the race for the 2027 title.Ancelotti and Tuchel didn’t leave João Pedro and Cole Palmer out of the World Cup to do them a favour, but that is what they have in effect done. After seven precious weeks of rest both players look rejuvenated and, even better from Xabi Alonso’s point of view, are playing as though they have a point to prove.Palmer looks like he is enjoying the trust of Alonso, a manager who puts a higher premium on talent and creativity than Tuchel.He scored in Chelsea’s opening game against Fulham with a curved overlapping run that took him outside João Pedro. Palmer explained afterwards that last season, under Enzo Maresca, he would not even have run into that space because it was not a “safe zone” – whatever that is.Cole Palmer celebrates scoring Chelsea’s fourth goal against Brighton. Photograph: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images After using a back four during his brief tenure at Real Madrid, Alonso has returned to the 3-4-3 that brought him such success at Bayer Leverkusen. In theory, this system allows him to give freedom to skilful creators like Palmer and, at Leverkusen, Florian Wirtz, because at the core of the team is a midfield double-pivot and back three that is designed to have control of the centre at all times. In Alonso’s Leverkusen team the usual pivot was Granit Xhaka and Robert Andrich. Their job was to stay close to each other and in touch with the three defenders. As Xhaka said: “Let the guys at the front do what they want. Here, stability.”Chelsea showed against Brighton, as they had last week against Fulham, that they are currently far from that kind of stability. Their stats were shambolic – 25 per cent possession was their lowest on record, 67 per cent pass completion was their lowest in 22 years.Still they won, thanks to the brilliance of their forwards. This was Emi Martínez’s first game in goal, while Malo Gusto was playing in midfield because Enzo Fernández – who may move to Manchester City before the transfer deadline – was not “focused” enough.Chelsea’s problems are the kinds of things that Alonso can rapidly improve on, especially over the next few weeks, when they have the luxury of training all week while their rivals play the Champions League group phase. In Palmer, Rogers and João Pedro, they have a front three to compare with any in the league. Next week the visitors to Stamford Bridge will be Arsenal, in what already looks like the first of the season’s potentially decisive matches.