Which football clubs have spent the most money in a transfer window?

“Chelsea spent around £300m in January. Is this a record for a single transfer window?” asks James McWilliam Woods.

It is indeed, breaking the record set by Real Madrid in the summer of 2019. The figures for each club’s expenditure tend to vary from source to source because of exchange rates, potential add-ons and the like, but according to our interactive guide to that particular window, Madrid spent £278.3m. More than half of that went on Eden Hazard (£88.5m) and Luka Jovic (£57.7m), who both flopped badly, but they did at least get value for money from Éder Militão (£44m), Ferland Mendy (£44m) and Rodrygo (£40m).

Chelsea’s summer 2022 splurge is in third place, with Wesley Fofana, Marc Cucurella, Raheem Sterling, Kalidou Koulibaly and the rest costing around £260m. There’s no consensus over which team sits fourth on the list because of the aforementioned variance, but there are a number of teams who everyone agrees have spent more than £200m in a single window. In chronological order, they are:

Real Madrid (summer 2009): Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaká, Karim Benzema, Xabi Alonso et al.

Manchester City (summer 2017): Benjamin Mendy, Kyle Walker, Bernardo Silva, Ederson, Danilo et al.

Paris Saint-Germain (summer 2017): Neymar et al.

Juventus (summer 2018): Cristiano Ronaldo, João Cancelo, Douglas Costa, Leonardo Bonucci et al.

Barcelona (summer 2019): Antoine Griezmann, Frenkie de Jong, Neto, Junior Firpo et al.

Chelsea (summer 2020): Kai Havertz, Ben Chilwell, Timo Werner, Hakim Ziyech, Édouard Mendy, Thiago Silva et al.

Manchester United (summer 2022): Antony, Casemiro, Lisandro Martínez, Tyrell Malacia, Christian Eriksen et al.

You’ll note that all of these were during summer transfer windows. We can’t be sure of the