Transfer deadline day closed at 23:00 BST on Tuesday 1 September, ending a summer window that opened on 15 June and finished with a joint British record, a €1bn spending milestone for Manchester City, and Everton conducting business at a frankly absurd rate.
Here is everything that mattered, club by club.
The headline: Enzo Fernandez joins Manchester City for £125m
The biggest deal of transfer deadline day was Chelsea agreeing to sell Enzo Fernandez to Manchester City for £125m. Both clubs confirmed it before the deadline. The fee equals the British record set when Liverpool signed Alexander Isak from Newcastle a year ago.
The Argentina international, fresh from a World Cup semi-final campaign, links up with Enzo Maresca — his former Chelsea manager. It resolves the saga we flagged in our earlier Premier League transfer news roundup, when Chelsea’s £120m valuation looked prohibitive and City had walked away.
The context makes it more striking. City sold Rodri to Barcelona for a package worth up to €76.5m, covered in our Rodri to Barcelona report, and were visibly overrun in midfield during their Community Shield defeat. Fernandez is the answer they eventually paid for.
Manchester City’s €1bn window
City were not finished. They also signed Everton winger Iliman Ndiaye in a deal worth up to £65m, on a contract running to 2031. Reports suggest City’s spending across the last 18 months now approaches €1bn.
Add Elliot Anderson’s earlier club-record arrival from Nottingham Forest, and Maresca has rebuilt the spine of the squad in a single window — while losing the best defensive midfielder in world football.
Tottenham’s transfer deadline day scramble
Spurs had a chaotic finish. Having missed out on Ndiaye, they pivoted to Chelsea and confirmed Mykhailo Mudryk on a season-long loan, alongside a move for defender Tosin Adarabioyo.
There is a neat symmetry there. Mudryk only returned to competitive football this summer after his doping suspension was resolved, as we covered in our piece on the Mudryk Chelsea return, where we noted a loan exit before the deadline had not been ruled out. It duly arrived.
Pape Matar Sarr went the other way, joining Juventus on an initial loan. It caps a summer in which Spurs spent roughly £320m on eight players — and lost their opening two league games without scoring, including a 2-0 home defeat to Newcastle in which £100m signing Sandro Tonali was mocked by his former supporters.
Everton’s remarkable day
No club was busier. Everton brought Jack Grealish back on another season-long loan from Manchester City, after his first spell was cut short by a broken foot in February. They also signed Ainsley Maitland-Niles for around €5m.
Outgoing, they sold Ndiaye to City, Beto to Fiorentina, Nathan Patterson to Torino and Tim Iroegbunam to Hull. That is four permanent sales in a day.
It nearly went wrong. Folarin Balogun was lined up from Monaco as Beto’s replacement, but reportedly failed his medical, leaving David Moyes briefly with only Thierno Barry at centre-forward. Manchester United also rejected Everton’s approach for Joshua Zirkzee.
Arsenal keep it quiet
Having already completed the £75m signing of Bruno Guimaraes — detailed in our Bruno Guimaraes Arsenal transfer piece — Arsenal’s transfer deadline day was mostly about outgoings.
Gabriel Jesus joined Barcelona on a three-year deal, Fabio Vieira moved permanently to Hamburg, and Ethan Nwaneri departed on loan. Arsenal also declined to match Lyon’s asking price for Malick Fofana, leaving Sunderland to reach an agreement before Crystal Palace attempted a late hijack.
Newcastle, Liverpool and Hull
Newcastle signed Matias Fernandez-Pardo from Lille for £51m, continuing a rebuild forced by a summer in which they lost their manager and their captain.
Liverpool completed the signing of 18-year-old goalkeeper Lucca Brughmans from Genk in a deal worth up to $40m. The 6ft 7in Belgian arrives alongside Bradley Barcola, whose protracted move from PSG we tracked in our Bradley Barcola Liverpool report, and Ronald Araujo, covered in our Ronald Araujo Liverpool piece.
Hull, fresh from beating Manchester United on the opening weekend, had a hectic transfer deadline day of their own — adding Iroegbunam from Everton, striker Ilyas Ansah from Union Berlin and Brooke Norton-Cuffy from Genoa.
The deals that did not happen
Not everything landed. Balogun’s Everton move was thrown into doubt by the failed medical. Manchester United parked talks for Leicester teenager Louis Page and held on to Zirkzee. Palace’s late move for Fofana came too late.
Chelsea, meanwhile, ended a window in which they had already spent roughly €408m on twelve signings by selling their most expensive midfielder — a striking reversal of direction under Xabi Alonso.
What transfer deadline day tells us about the season
Three themes stand out. First, the money has concentrated further at the top: City and Chelsea alone accounted for a colossal share of the window’s turnover. Second, loans have become the mechanism of choice for clubs managing profitability rules — Grealish, Mudryk, Nwaneri, Sarr and Araujo all moved that way.
Third, and most consequential, several squads look materially different from the ones that started the season two weeks ago. Nine clubs began under a manager appointed this year, and many of those managers have only now received the players they asked for.
The next window opens on 1 January and closes on 1 February at 23:00 GMT. Until then, these squads are what they are.
For the official club-by-club list of every completed move, the Premier League’s own deadline day guide is the definitive source, while FootballTransfers logged every deal across Europe as it happened.
