Very easy, isn\u2019t it, to get excited about the ol\u2019 big-money signing? Spending megabucks on the shiny new player who will either solve all your problems or bring you whole new ones? Lovely stuff. Even if you do have to faff about selling your women\u2019s team to yourselves to pay for it thanks to namby-pamby woke PSR red tape.<\/p>\n
But do you know what can sometimes be even better? A lovely bargain. Feels like you\u2019ve cheated somehow, doesn\u2019t it? When you get a bargain? Even more than the actual cheating \u2013 sorry \u2013 \u2018loophole exploiting\u2019.<\/p>\n
With Manchester United apparently considering an \u00a38m move for Wilfred Ndidi<\/strong><\/a>, we find ourselves wondering who\u2019s played that game best recently? Hint: It\u2019s not Manchester United.<\/p>\n Anyway. Let\u2019s have a quick look at 10 such bargains. Few ground rules to sort out first. We\u2019re going for \u00a310m as our cut-off here, and obviously in this age of undisclosed transfer fees and uncertainty over which currency the fee was actually paid in, that means there\u2019s going to be a bit of guesswork \u2013 only some of which could reasonably be described as educated \u2013 involved.<\/p>\n Rest assured, if your favourite is inexplicably missing it\u2019s not because we forgot about them, or are biased against both him and the stupid club you support, but because by our calculations he actually cost \u00a310.01m okay? Good.<\/p>\n We\u2019re also excluding free transfers completely. That feels like an entirely different category of bargain hunting, often involving the sneaky running down of contracts and resultant increase in wage packet. And no goalkeepers either, because with a couple of massive outlying exceptions they do still seem to exist on a completely different transfer-fee payscale to everyone else. Sorry, Matz Sels.<\/p>\n Another layer of inherent subjectivity comes with the fact a \u00a310m signing in 2024 and a \u00a310m signing in 2004 are very different beasts. We\u2019ve not set ourselves a specific cut-off point, but have in more woolly and unscientific fashion vaguely attempted to favour more recent deals over older ones. For once, recency bias might actually be a virtue.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 10) Justin Kluivert (Bournemouth)<\/strong> Selling Dominic Solanke for around \u00a360m and replacing him with Evanilson for about half that, for instance. It\u2019s incredibly smart transfer operating, but tis no bargain on our terms. The same applies to the signings of central-defensive duo Dean Huijsen and Ilya Zabarnyi for about \u00a320m each over the last few years. Huijsen has already been sold on at a hefty profit, as will Zabarnyi if he were to move this summer.<\/p>\n At the actual sub-\u00a310m bargain bucket deal, though, the best has probably if we\u2019re being sensible been Antoine Semenyo, but we\u2019re not that interested in sensible. We\u2019re going for Justin Kluivert, largely because our own gut instinct was that even at just under \u00a310m this was a colossal waste of money for a player who had already failed in Europe\u2019s other four big leagues.<\/p>\n Achieving the milestone of playing and indeed scoring in all five of Europe\u2019s top leagues \u2013 England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France \u00a0\u2013 by the age of 24 is certainly notable. But it\u2019s not definitely good, is it? Especially when you\u2019ve also got a famous name to trade on. It does suggest a certain itinerant flightiness, and more than one club discovering the name might be all you actually have to offer.<\/p>\n At Bournemouth and in the Premier League, though, he has shown signs of settling down and finding an environment that works. He has already played more league games here than anywhere else, and scored not just more goals but also at a better ratio.<\/p>\n And last season he also became the first Premier League player to score a hat-trick of penalties, so that\u2019s fun isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 9) Callum Hudson-Odoi (Nottingham Forest)<\/strong> Sure, it\u2019s a lovely round number and we all enjoy those, but it also just rules out what was last summer\u2019s most obvious actual bargain buy in Nikola Milenkovic, whose reported fee was somewhere around \u00a311m. A staggering bargain for sure, but utterly useless and irrelevant to us.<\/p>\n What fools we are.<\/p>\n Luckily the previous summer, Forest brought Callum Hudson-Odoi from Chelsea for a fee that was definitely well below our arbitrary and self-defeating line.<\/p>\n A one-time wonderkid who had been linked with Europe\u2019s great and good, Hudson-Odoi\u2019s career had stalled almost entirely, and there was little evidence from a season on loan with Bayer Leverkusen in 2022\/23 that he could still become the player his youth records promised.<\/p>\n Forest took the plunge, though, and have been rewarded handsomely, with Hudson-Odoi a key figure in one of the more unlikely storylines of the last couple of seasons, helping Forest first beat relegation despite a points deduction in 23\/24 and then propelling them into a European position last season. A player who had never managed more than two league goals in any season ever has now contributed 13 across two seasons at the City Ground.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 8) Yoane Wissa (Brentford)<\/strong> The numbers from Wissa\u2019s first couple of seasons look uninspiring on first glance, with seven goals from 30 games in 21\/22 and seven from 38 in 22\/23. But even a slightly deeper look reveals some hefty mitigation, with only 28 of those 68 appearances coming from the start.<\/p>\n Since Toney\u2019s ban and subsequent departure, Wissa has emerged from his shadow and truly come into his own with 12 goals in 2023\/24 and then 19 last season as his partnership with Bryan Mbeumo reached new levels.<\/p>\n MAILBOX: Is Bryan Mbeumo \u2018worth\u2019 \u00a363m? Well he is to Brentford\u2026<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 7) Kaoru Mitoma (Brighton)<\/strong> Slightly annoyingly, though, a lot of the more recent signings of that nature come in just over the \u00a310m mark and anyway, we don\u2019t want this entire feature to become bogged down entirely in vulgar price-taggery and gauche net spend tables<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n While in many ways the game has never felt more gone than it does right now, let us at least take some comfort that it remains a sport where someone like Mitoma can and does thrive in a league like the Barclays.<\/p>\n He is perfect. Just if anything for me, Clive, a fraction too maddening for the big beasts to come sniffing around too seriously, meaning Brighton fans get to enjoy for an extended period of time a player who at his best is as joyous and joyful as any to have graced these shores in many a long year.<\/p>\n Long may his mercurial reign continue. He is, in our eyes, the absolutely perfect example of a player who will steal the limelight in a 2pm Super Sunday game, have pundits raving and saying things like \u201cIf anyone tops that in this game from Anfield\/Old Trafford\/the Emirates\/the Etihad today we\u2019re in for a treat\u201d before the dullest Big Six 0-0 of all time nevertheless hoovers up all the attention entirely and Mitoma\u2019s goal and two assists in a 3-1 win over Everton are instantly cast to the fringes, because life is just stupid and unfair.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 6) Antonee Robinson (Fulham)<\/strong> Robinson has missed a grand total of seven games across Fulham\u2019s three successful seasons as a reliably entertaining and entertainingly reliable mid-table team, being named the club\u2019s player of the year in 2023\/24 and last season only seven Premier League players \u2013 all of them very much attacking players \u2013 provided more than Robinson\u2019s 10 assists.<\/p>\n With three years left on his extended Fulham contract, it\u2019s reasonable to conclude he\u2019s not going anywhere for \u00a32m again any time soon.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
Feels like you can\u2019t have this list without a little bit of Bournemouth after their transfer dealings of the last few years, but at the same time it\u2019s also true that their smartest and canniest work has probably happened slightly outside the scope of this particular list.<\/p>\n
We definitely needed some Forest in here after the events of last season, but alas boxed ourselves unnecessarily into a very stupid corner with our \u00a310m cutoff.<\/p>\n
Brentford are without doubt one of the more adept Premier League teams at this particular craft, and casually chucking a mere handful of millions Lorient\u2019s way for Ivan Toney\u2019s replacement two years before they even knew they needed one is among their very best bits of business.<\/p>\n
Brighton are the undoubted masters of the art when it comes to scooping up budget replacements for players they are going to sell at a vast profit 12 months later. Far more often than can possibly be coincidence those budget replacements become the vast profit-makers themselves a couple of years further down the line.<\/p>\n
Signed for a mere \u00a32m after Wigan were relegated from the Championship, Robinson found himself in the Premier League for the last of Fulham\u2019s yo-yo relegations. Having instantly popped back up again, Robinson has been a crucial part of the Cottagers pulling off the rare trick of ending the yo-yo business by defying gravity and staying up rather than down. West Brom and Norwich could never.<\/p>\n