It seems lately that every year, these articles start with the same headline: highest ever spending and the English Premier League (EPL) dominates the European window again because of television money.

Realistically, neither of those facts will change in this window or any time soon, but it still feels like this 2026 summer transfer window will be a watershed moment for the football industry.

The usual statistics that boggle the mind apply again this window: EPL teams once again set a new window record in spending £3.46 billion (S$6 billion). Just five years ago, the summer window saw a spend of £1.13 billion.

Even teams like Coventry City and Ipswich Town can now spend more than traditional European giants, with Ipswich in particular following the model so successfully demonstrated by Sunderland last year, as the Portman Road club signed 14 players for nearly £200 million.

Ipswich spent more than Barcelona, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain this window. In total, 11 EPL teams set new transfer records this summer, and that doesn’t include Liverpool, who still made the eye-watering £123 million purchase of Bradley Barcola from PSG.

But behind the statistics, two key trends underpinned the window.

Firstly, the Big Six exerted the spending power granted by their commercial dominance as the £100-million and £50-million thresholds became more frequent markers for even above average players.

Before this window, the number of players transferred to an EPL team for over £100 million could be counted on just six fingers and across just four teams – Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz, Enzo Fernandez, Jack Grealish, Moses Caicedo and Declan Rice. Now you can add to that list Barcola, Morgan Rogers, Sandro Tonali, Elliot Anderson and Fernandez (again), with Tottenham the fifth member from the Big Six joining the club.

Tottenham – despite finishing 17th two seasons in a row – showed that the Daniel Levy years of thriftiness and commercial investment did not go to waste (on paper, anyway) by smashing the...