so this afternoon, to avoid doing my actual job, i went through all of our transfers since summer 2006 to see how much money we've actually spent since our big move. the move to the emirates was billed as required to compete with the big clubs. we needed a bigger stadium to generate revenue so we could keep up and spend to stay competitive. so, how have we done?

i would recommend that you post a guess of what you think the net spend is prior to reading all of the details and the final bottom line. then you can see how close you actually were. im going to use the spoiler tag so it isnt readily visible. have fun. if you notice any major errors, let me know and i will update.

[spoiler]

so, i combed through the wikipedia entries for all of our seasons, starting with 2006-2007 (that summer was when we moved to the emirates). for transfers where the amount was undisclosed, i used https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk to try and find an amount. as i scanned through the list, to keep it manageable, i excluded a lot of the free transfers for the youth players, because they didnt impact the bottom line and had no impact on the actual squad. i threw in a few of the free transfers just for laughs. i tried linking to the Excel file and it broke, so i'll just post the screenshots of the full list.

here are the specifics:

players purchased: 55
total amount spent: £479,960,000

players sold: 51
total amount received: £394,605.00

players swapped: WILLIAM GALLAS

net spend: £85,355,000

breaking it down in intervals

06/07 through 08/09: net spend of £9,650,000
09/10 through 11/12: net spend of £-48,730,000
12/13 through 14/15: net spend of £84,685,000
15/16 through 17/18: net spend of £39,750,000

first 6 years: net spend of -£39,080,000
last 6 years: net spend of £124,435,000

[/spoiler]