Football Observatory CIES claims United have spent £209m on players since July 2012. According to the study, United spent £1.4bn on 33 players over the 10-year period, when their market value was estimated at £1.19bn. Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain were cited as the next two worst culprits for overpaying, with the Italian club estimated to have paid £204m for player chances over the past decade and the French champions £142m overpaid. United have come under fire for some of the fees they have paid out to players in recent seasons, notably the £85m committed to signing Harry Maguire from Leicester and the £50m paid to Crystal Palace for Aaron Wan- Bissaka in 2019. Wan-Bissaka has played just four minutes of football under Erik ten Hag this season and appears to be surplus to requirements, while United captain Maguire has lost his place in the team under the new manager. United’s £227m outlay on six new signings this summer was their biggest outing of a season ever and saw them pay significantly more than the original valuations of some targets. Having rejected an initial €60m bid for Anthony from Ajax, United ended up paying €100m for the Brazil striker, a month after shelling out £57m to sign Argentina defender Lisandro Martinez from the Dutch club. , nearly £20 million more than the opening bid. CIES has ranked Aston Villa as the Premier League’s second-worst overspending club since 2012, with the Midlands club accused of overpaying players by £131m. Wolverhampton Wanderers, Tottenham and Brighton were the only three Premier League sides out of 36 clubs who managed to invest less money than expected to complete the transfer deals assessed, according to the study. CIES cited this as confirmation of the “key role” played by the Premier League in “increasing inflation in the transfer market”. The CIES Football Observatory is a research group of the International Center for Sports Studies and specializes in the statistical analysis of football.
