The summer of 2026 has once again seen records smashed across the transfer market. Elliot Anderson’s £116m move from Nottingham Forest to Manchester City briefly made him the most expensive British player in history — a record he held for only a few weeks before Morgan Rogers’ £117m Chelsea transfer took it. Tottenham broke their own club record twice in a single week, paying £85m for Mateus Fernandes before topping it days later with a package worth up to £100m for Sandro Tonali.

Then, having just spent close to a quarter of a billion pounds rebuilding their spine, Spurs turned around and sold two of their best players for a fraction of what either was worth. Djed Spence — fresh off a standout England World Cup campaign, with three years still left on his contract — will reportedly leave for Inter Milan in a deal worth just €31.5m (£27m), a fee multiple outlets independently described as “shockingly low.” Club captain Cristian Romero is also set to follow him out the door by joining Atlético Madrid for an estimated €40m package. Tottenham don’t have a spending problem. Once again, it’s what happens on the other side of the books.

ATLANTA, GA – JULY 07: Argentina teammates Rodrigo de Paul, Lionel Messi and Cristian Romero react following the conclusion of the FIFA World Cup 2026 Round of 16 match between Argentina and Egypt. (Photo by Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire)

This isn’t a new story for English football this summer. In the same window, Arsenal sold Leandro Trossard to Beşiktaş for £15-17m and Jakub Kiwior to Porto for a fixed £14.8m, both fees that looked more like mid-table Championship business than deals done by the reigning champions. Spurs are now the second major Premier League club in the same window to sell into Europe at what looks like a genuine discount. One club doing this is a headline, two in the space of a fortnight, starts to look like a pattern.

Premier League clubs are dealing with the reality that years of revenue growth outpacing the rest of Europe has created a genuine wealth disparity. European clubs generally have lower revenue ceilings, tied to smaller league broadcast deals and thinner commercial opportunities. This isn’t dissimilar to the spending power between a wealthy nation like the US and poorer countries around the world. Just as the US’s trade deficit means it exports far less value than it imports, English clubs selling into Europe don’t get the same currency back. Spence leaving for £27m, Romero for £34m — these fees reflect what Inter and Atlético can actually generate, the same way a foreign country buying US exports pays in its own constrained purchasing power, not in the inflated terms the US itself operates under domestically.

So why sell outside of England?

It seems odd for a club mid-rebuild, having just broken its own transfer record twice, to accept discounted fees for two of its most important players. Aside from individual player preference, a club like Tottenham doesn’t want to directly strengthen a domestic rival. Romero and Spence would each improve several other Premier League sides significantly, but selling them into Europe instead avoids handing that improvement to a team Spurs will be competing against every week. Given how much is financially at stake in the Premier League table itself, accepting a lower fee from abroad is a trade-off clubs are increasingly willing to make.

In theory, a European club could act as a broker, re-selling a player back to the Premier League within the same window — circumventing any reluctance a selling club might have about strengthening a domestic rival directly. FIFA, though, closed this loophole back in 2020, defining the practice as a bridge transfer: two connected transfers of the same player, run through a middle club specifically to get around the usual rules. Any player moved twice within roughly 16 weeks is presumed guilty of exactly that, unless the clubs involved can prove otherwise.

Tottenham and Arsenal aren’t alone in this either. Aston Villa’s Lucas Digne — a current France international, fresh off the 2026 World Cup — left for Paris Saint-Germain this summer for what ESPN’s own transfer grades called a “relatively nominal fee,” with the outlet noting PSG “probably couldn’t find a cheaper deal for a player of this quality if they tried.” In reality, the price simply reflects where the European market is — defined by what a club is willing to pay for that player at that moment, not what it’s actually worth to the side selling it.

This isn’t a Tottenham problem, any more than it was an Arsenal problem. It’s what happens when English clubs try to sell into a market they don’t control the pricing of. The Premier League is rich enough to inflate its own buying market whilst shrugging off deflated sales abroad; this is a symptom of success rather than failure. Whether it continues and remains sustainable is a separate issue. Envious European eyes might try to restrict spending some way through UEFA regulations, or the bubble around broadcasting and commercial revenue might simply burst. But right now, the Premier League is seemingly rich enough not to worry.