LONDON: Chelsea set a British transfer record on the January transfer window deadline day with the €121m (£107m) signing of for Enzo |Fernandez, Benfica’s World Cup-winning Argentina midfielder.

Accountant Deloitte said that the Premier League clubs’ gross spend of £815m during the 2023 January transfer window was the largest ever. This was 90pc higher than the previous record (£430m in 2018) and almost triple the previous January window (£295m).

Premier clubs also set a record for net transfer expenditure during a January window at £720m, eclipsing the previous record in January 2022 (£180m).

Combined with the record spend during the summer transfer window (£1.9bn), Premier League clubs have spent a total of £2.8bn during the 2022-23 season, a new all-time high.

Chelsea spent more on gross transfer expenditure than the combined total of all clubs in the Bundesliga, LaLiga, Serie A and Ligue 1, and more than the total spent by Premier League clubs in each of the previous January windows, excluding 2018 (£430m).

Top five deals (£ sterling):

Enzo Fernandez – Benfica to Chelsea: 105m

Mykhailo Mudryk – Shakhtar Donetsk to Chelsea: 62m

Anthony Gordon – Everton to Newcastle: 40m

Cody Gakpo – PSV Eindhoven to Liverpool: 35.4m

Benoit Badiashile – Monaco to Chelsea: 33m

Total January window gross spending: £815m

—-net spending: £720m

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