UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations have finally made an impact on the transfer window as clubs accept they can only invest what they have generated in revenue, according to the latest Soccerex Transfer Review by Prime Time Sport.

Real Madrid (€113m), FC Barcelona (€79m), Atletico Madrid (€77m), Chelsea (€94), Liverpool (€92m) and Manchester City (€62.2m) all recouped record figures for player income in figures released by The Soccerex Transfer Review by Prime Time Sport.

This in turn allowed for a record level of expenditure by FC Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Liverpool, whilst the likes of PSG and Monaco, who are backed by wealthy owners, had to reign in their spending due to the limited revenue generated in Ligue 1.

Premier League Top the Tables in Europe

The English Premier League dominated the transfer window with combined spending of over €1 billion for the first time ever.

Player expenditure in the Premier League was up 41% on the previous year and is double the closest rival as La Liga clubs spent a total of €500m.

Manchester United topped the spending tables with a club record of €196 million, the second highest amount spent in a transfer window across Europe ever.  Arsenal also broke their club record for expenditure with €102 million.

Southampton were the surprise leaders of Europe in player sales with a total of €120 million, the 3rd highest total in history, which also saw them break in to the top 10 spenders with purchases of €73m, higher than Premier League champions Manchester City.

The spectacular rise of the Premier League is down to a number of factors but the ability to generate significant income from stadium, commercial and now player sales underpins the rise in dominance under the UEFA FFP ruling.

Manchester United’s desire to get back into the Champions League, however, cannot be underestimated, their spending only being surpassed by Real Madrid (€265m) in 2009/10.

A remarkable finding has come out of London based club Chelsea who loaned 29 players, which equated to 14% of total loans in the Premier League.

Homegrown Talent Pool

The English Premier League continues to have the lowest percentage of homegrown players with only 33% of all squads eligible to represent England.

La Liga, however, is the highest ranked with 61% of their players able to play for the national team.

Despite the low numbers of individuals investment in English players has tripled in 2014/15 with €203m spent on English players, representing 20% of overall expenditure.

The average cost of national players in England rose to €4m compared to €0.4m in Spain where only 4.2% of transfer money was used to bring in Spanish players.

Despite the departure of Danny Welbeck and Tom Cleverley, Manchester United still have the most homegrown players with 7, Arsenal and Aston Villa both have 6, whilst Liverpool and Newcastle United have 5 each.

Hull, QPR and Sunderland don’t have any homegrown players within their squad.