Why Elliot Anderson is only the 31st most expensive Premier League transfer ever despite huge £116m fee

Manchester City have won the race to sign Nottingham Forest star Elliot Anderson in the summer transfer window.

The Blues made the England international their top transfer target for the summer and quickly emerged as the frontrunners to get a deal done.

City are preparing for life after legendary manager Pep Guardiola and are set to give his replacement Enzo Maresca the perfect welcome gift in the form of Anderson.

It is understood City have agreed a club-record transfer fee of £116 million for the central midfielder, eclipsing the £100m they spent to sign Jack Grealish from Aston Villa five years ago.

The transfer fee for Anderson is fixed at £116m, with no performance-related add-ons or clauses included. It is lower than the British record set when Liverpool signed Alexander Isak for £125m last summer, but it will set the record for a British player, beating the £105m Arsenal spent on West Ham star Declan Rice two years ago.

READ MORE: Arsenal can use three players in swap deal for Bruno Guimaraes after £55m bid

City won't be able to escape the usual spending jibes after agreeing on an eye-watering fee for Anderson, though, in the wider context of historical Premier League transfers, it might not be as obscene as it first appears.

30 transfers more expensive than Anderson

City's deal for Anderson might represent the second-highest transfer fee paid for a player during the Premier League era, but figures released by football finance expert Kieran Maguire suggest it is only actually the 31st most expensive deal when adjusted for inflation.

In a social media post uploaded to X, the Professor of Football Finance at the University of Liverpool revealed a table of how Anderson's proposed move to Manchester ranks when compared with other Premier League deals.

The updated figures take into account both rising UK inflation rates and extensive football market research to calculate overall transfer market inflation. It means that relatively low figures paid in the 1990's and early 2000's are put into a modern context to emphasise just how enormous those outgoings were at the time.

According to the research, Alan Shearer's move from Blackburn Rovers to Newcastle United still stands as the Premier League record transfer fee when adjusted for transfer market inflation. Maguire believes that the £15m fee spent in 1996 would stand at roughly £237m two decades later.

Elliot Anderson's deal at £116m puts him 31st in the all time Premier League inflation adjusted transfer fee list, now updated for 2026/27 prices. pic.twitter.com/VTqV0g3qz5

— Kieran Maguire (@KieranMaguire) June 26, 2026

The table also highlights the huge financial power Manchester United possessed under Sir Alex Ferguson, with deals for Rio Ferdinand and Juan Sebastian Veron next on the list. Liverpool's capture of Stan Collymore for £8.5m in 1995 is valued at a modern equivalent of roughly £177m, with deals for Fernando Torres, Dennis Bergkamp, Andy Cole and Andriy Shevchenko just below.

United dominate the top of the list with five of the ten most expensive Premier League signings of all time, with the data valuing moves for Dwight Yorke, Paul Pogba and Wayne Rooney all over the £140m mark in a modern context.

The research claims City have only actually conducted five of the 44 most expensive transfers in Premier League history, with their £100m move for Grealish now supposedly valued at £133m, putting them 14th on the list.

As for the Anderson deal, it is claimed that it is only the 31st most-expensive deal in Premier League history, just above Dimitar Berbatov's move to United and only £500,000 behind Shearer's move from Southampton to Blackburn and the deal that saw Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink join Chelsea from Atletico Madrid.