Men's summer transfer grades: Man United get B- for Sesko

```blockquote With clubs increasing their spending to £370 million during the January transfer window, Manchester City’s £180 million expenditure is likely to impact betting odds, potentially favoring their chances of dominating the next season. ```

Clubs increased their spending in the January window to £370 million -- up on the £100m paid out last year -- though Manchester City are chiefly responsible after splashing out £180m of that on their own.

We were nowhere near the 2023 record of £815m, but will the summer see a rise in expensive moves? This year, for the first time, the transfer window has been split into two because of the Club World Cup.

The first window ran from June 1-10, it was closed for six days before reopening (for Premier League clubs at least) on June 16. But, as ever, international deals not involving clubs in the Club World Cup, and free transfers, didn't go through until July 1.

Here are grades for all the major confirmed transfers in the men's game, with each listed by date and then by highest fee.

Aug. 9 €76.5m (£66.3m; $88.9m) Man United emerged victorious in the tug-of-war with Newcastle for Sesko's signature. Eyebrows have been raised at the price (add-ons could see it rise to an eventual €85 million), but this is the cost of doing business in the young striker market, after Hugo Ekitiké joined Liverpool for just under €80m in July.

Leipzig played the situation perfectly. First, they refused to budge when Arsenal bid less earlier in the summer; then, they stoked a bidding war between two other Premier League giants, eventually extracting maximal value.

€40m ($46.6m) Signing a young goalkeeper when you already have one of the best in the world (Gianluigi Donnarumma) seems a strange thing to do. But with Donnarumma's contract talks stalling (he's into his final year), PSG moved quickly to land the 23-year-old Chavalier for a decent fee. It'll be odd if they don't find a new club for Donnarumma now though. Lille, meanwhile, bank a very decent fee for one of their top young stars. And that will help them rebuild.

€53m (£45.9m; $61.7m) After spending an initial €75m to sign Nunez from Benfica a few years ago, Liverpool did well to recoup most of it. Nunez is unpredictable as a player and never quite settled, so it's right for both parties to move on and the Reds can use the money for another signing. It's not the marquee transfer Al Hilal got when bringing in Neymar, but Nunez should fare better in Saudi Arabia than he did in the Premier League.

Aug. 8 €29.8m (£26m; $34.5m) Following the departures of Jhon Durán and Marcus Rashford this year, Villa urgently needed to find another striker in this transfer window. In Guessand, they've signed a player who has a No. 9 skill set but can happily play wide, making him a smart fit in terms of squad building. The Ivory Coast international just turned 24 years of age and provided 20 goal contributions in Ligue 1 last season, making the initial fee -- which could rise to €34m with add-ons -- look good from Villa's perspective, but perhaps a little low from Nice's.

Aug. 6 €34m ($39.4m) Jashari shone for Club Brugge in the Champions League last season, often feeling like the heartbeat of a midfield that stood up to some incredibly strong tests. He can receive the ball under pressure, skip forward with it and redistribute, then even arrive in the box for the odd goal. After an arduous negotiation, both sides will feel like they've come out with a fair deal. If add-ons are met, this fee could reach €39m, which would be a record departure for Club Brugge; while Milan have found an excellent replacement for Tijjani Reijnders.

£25m ($33.3m) Dewsbury-Hall experienced a strange 2024-25 season with Chelsea. He signed for £30m but barely featured in the Premier League (259 minutes), instead being restricted to Conference League action. He did at least feature in all 13 European games, scoring four goals and helping the Blues win the competition. But that's not enough to satisfy anyone, so a move to Everton works for all parties. If he rediscovers his Leicester City form from the year before -- where he scored 12 goals and provided 14 assists en route to the Championship crown -- then £25m, plus a potential £4m in add-ons, will prove good value for a team in need of his skill set.

£20m ($26.5m) The way Son has bowed out at Spurs is genuinely heartwarming: He captained the club to a long-awaited trophy, then departed on his own terms, playing his final game in South Korea. It's picture perfect. It was also fairly obvious he was slowing down and picking up more injuries last season, so, quietly, Spurs will be delighted to receive a really strong fee for the 33-year-old.

With a transfer fee of $26.5m, LAFC have set a new MLS record for a player who ideally plays in the position their current biggest difference-maker, Denis Bouanga, plays. It's a big marketing move, but will it work out on the pitch? Can Son adapt, potentially by shifting to striker, and deliver the star performances this kind of fee demands from the off?

Loan Weah's playing time took a nosedive from the point Igor Tudor was appointed Juventus manager in March, starting just three Serie A games over the stretch and barely featuring at the Club World Cup. A summer move always felt likely. Marseille are getting a decent player on favorable terms, as the loan means they can push the payment into next season and they can sign him permanently for €14m. Weah will replace Luiz Henrique, who moved to Inter in early June, as a versatile right-sider.

Free Müller's move to MLS is one of the most fascinating deals of the summer. He's built an elite career out of being smarter than everyone else and taking up clever positions you wouldn't expect, but to unlock that skillset, you need teammates who complement you and have the vision to pick you out. No doubt he'll enjoy playing off Brian White, who occupies defenders, and with Ryan Gauld, who should be able to play those unexpected passes when fit again. The way Jayden Nelson runs at defenses will open pockets for Müller, too. On paper, it's a fit, but will it translate to the pitch?

Aug. 3 €40m (£35m; $46.1m) Hato is not your average teenager. He is incredibly experienced for his age; he's played more than 100 games for Ajax's first team, operating at both left back and center back in back-three and back-four systems. Few gain this much exposure, this early. He's a technically gifted footballer who moves smoothly across the pitch and shows great passing technique and range. There'll be plenty to learn defensively at Premier League level and he's also a bit too one-footed for comfort, but Chelsea will be confident they can coach up what is obviously a stellar prospect.

Loan Palhinha is not the midfield profile Spurs are crying out for; they need a reliable controller and playmaker from deep, whereas the big Portuguese excels in the defensive side of the game. That said, on a loan with no obligation, he's a handy presence to add to the squad. The 30-year-old's time at Bayern Munich has been a complete failure and the club haven't exactly secured a particularly good deal here. It would be no surprise if Spurs did not take up the €30m option to make the move permanent in 2026, leaving Bayern right back where they started.

July 31 €75m (£65m; $85.5m) There's two ways to look at this transfer from Galatasaray's perspective. The first is that, for a player of Osimhen's quality -- he's arguably a top-five striker in world football -- this is a pretty reasonable fee. For a comparison, Alexander Isak would cost double this if he were to move. The second is that this blows the Turkish transfer record out of the water. It was previously set by Youssef En-Nesyri's €19.5m move to Fenerbahce, so more than tripling that figure seems incredibly excessive in the context of the Süper Lig. Whichever way you look at it from Napoli's perspective, they haven't managed this situation well. They've fumbled opportunities to earn more from this transfer in the past after the relationship between the club and the player completely broke down in 2023. Sure, they still won Serie A last season without him, but they have taken a financial hit.

€40m (£34.6m; $46.1m) Ndoye's had a phenomenal 12 months, first starring at Euro 2024 for a strong Switzerland team, then capping a great domestic campaign by helping Bologna win the Coppa Italia to end a 51-year trophy drought. He leaves the 's in a good place, having netted them a fee that could rise to €45m with add-ons. As a winger, he's fast, clever when he needs to be, and physical when he needs to be. Forest certainly need those qualities now Anthony Elanga has departed, so Ndoye stands to become an important player for the club very quickly.

July 30 £66m (€75m; $88m) It's tough to escape the feeling Liverpool have played a blinder here. They insisted Díaz was going nowhere all summer, then watched as Bayern scratched around for solutions in an increasingly desperate situation. The German champions said goodbye to Thomas Müller and Leroy Sané, missed out on Athletic Club's Nico Williams, then saw Jamal Musiala brutally injured at the Club World Cup. They probably shouldn't have paid this much to sign a 28-year-old winger, but perhaps felt they were left with no other choice. Liverpool will be quietly happy to take the money and reload.

July 29 £27m ($36.3m) Trafford enjoyed an unbelievable 2024-25 season with Burnley, keeping 29 clean sheets en route to promotion, going 1,132 minutes without conceding at one stage, and preventing 11.8 more goals than expected based on the shots he faced. To top all that off, he's so good with the ball at his feet he looks like an outfielder at times. Losing this player upon promotion is frankly horrid for the Clarets, who stand no chance of finding a like-for-like replacement. The £27m fee received isn't anywhere near enough to save the optics on this, even if there may have been a PSR element at play. City, though, will be delighted. Trafford is an academy graduate who has flourished elsewhere and is now returning to provide a long-term solution between the sticks.

July 26 €63m (£54m; $73.8m) Arsenal's long chase for a No. 9 is over. Gyökeres brings goals, physicality and a determination to prove he belongs at level. The fact he's tormented teams in the Champions League for Sporting suggests he won't have trouble doing that. While €10m of potential add-ons could take this transfer above the €70m mark, it still feels like it's relatively in keeping with the market -- and that's a win for the Gunners, because their desperation for a striker threatened to drive this price into orbit.

Loan continues to open doors for Inter Miami. De Paul was desperate to unite with his compatriot at club level and has seemingly made a sacrifice to do so, as he'll only earn a Designated Player salary starting in 2026 should Miami make the move permanent. This is a huge coup for the club, who in ordinary circumstances would not be able to nab a quality midfielder from .

July 24 €15m (£13m; $17.5m) All of Arsenal's summer business has been geared towards the here and now up until this point, but Mosquera represents a nod to the future. He's nowhere near ready to challenge William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhães for a spot in the XI, but his physical tools suggest he could be molded into something great. If you're thinking this fee looks a little low, Valencia would regretfully agree.

A package that could rise to roughly €20m is below market value for a high-potential center back with 82 LaLiga appearances to his name already, but lacked leverage in negotiations as Mosquera had entered the final year of his contract.

July 23 £69m (€79.7m; $93m) Liverpool tried and failed to sign Alexander Isak. Instead, they settled for the next best thing on the market in Ekitike. The Frenchman's career is firmly back on track after a brilliant 18-month spell with Eintracht Frankfurt saw him register 19 goals and 10 assists in the Bundesliga. The way Ekitike plays the No. 9 role is far from traditional. He's tall and slim, but would rather peel off to the flank, collect the ball and start dribbling, as opposed to battling defenders and seeking contact. It's easy to see him slotting into that role with the Reds, as that's largely how Luis Díaz played as their center forward last season.

There's a cap on how high Liverpool's grade can be here because this is a fee (it could rise to £79m), but Ekitike is at least the right style and age (23) to spend heavily on.

Loan Something had to give for Rashford to find a new home this summer. In the end, it was Rashford himself. He has reportedly taken a sizable wage cut to facilitate a loan to Barcelona. This is still far from ideal for Man United, as the much-coveted permanent exit has not come, while the permanent option price has dropped from £40m to around £26m. But it is, finally, a concrete step toward Rashford's time at Old Trafford coming to an end.

Barça, meanwhile, have ended up replacing Ansu Fati with a player who can contribute much more, offers a completely different dimension to the team and still hasn't actually committed to anything long term.

July 21 £65m ($87.4m) Man United zeroed in on Mbeumo and, in the end, paid more than pretty much anyone expected to make the deal happen. He's been a consistently strong performer in the Premier League for the last four seasons and has a wand of a left foot.

The concern should be whether the Cameroon international's historic 2024-25 season, in which he scored 20 goals and provided seven assists, can be repeated. He overperformed his xG (expected goals) to a frightening degree, scoring 7.5 goals more than expected, and likely won't get to take six penalties next year as a teammate of Bruno Fernandes.

Brentford, obviously, will not care about any of this. They've extracted a huge price from United here; it could rise to £71m with add-ons.

July 18 £48m ($64.4m) This is a curious transfer from just about every angle. Madueke has done well to add elements to his game over the past two years and now seems definitively good enough to play for a top club. Yet just as he made that leap his departure was sanctioned, while the winger Chelsea signed this summer (Jamie Gittens) isn't as polished. Arsenal certainly needed to add a winger, but it felt like a left sider who could also play on the right was the clear move -- not the other way around. There's a touch surprising that Madueke, who seemed on the verge of exploding, would either accept a losing battle against Bukayo Saka for the right-wing spot, or commit to the less-favored left wing. There must be more pieces to this puzzle. Consider the low(ish) grades open to revision, should more come to light.

July 17 £12.5m (€14.6m; $17m) In what was starting to look like Martin Ødegaard's tour of Europe in 2014 to select his next club at age 16, his Norway compatriot Nypan has settled on Man City. Nypan is expected to spend the first phases of his career in England out on loan. But the key to this deal, and the reason why City get an A+, is that £12.5m is reportedly the sum total of the fee. No clauses, no add-ons; just £12.5m for one of Europe's premier young talents.

July 16 €30m ($34.8m) Cardoso proved quite the find for Betis, who signed him 18 months ago for $6.3m, reached a Conference League final with his help, then flipped him for roughly five times their investment. The American is a prolific tackler and interceptor (94th percentile in LaLiga in 2024-25) and has a knack for turning out of pressure on the ball well, often pirouetting or skipping away from markers. Diego Simeone will love those traits, plus the fact that he doesn't dally with his passes. He'll have to fight hard for a spot in this midfield, but he brings a fresh, youthful, energetic element to the setup.

July 15 £5.8m ($7.8m) Agyemang feels like the exact sort of striker profile that can make a splash in the Championship. He's a little rough around the edges, sure, but he can battle, hustle defenders and provide a threat on goal. It's an outside-of-the-box signing for Derby, which should be praised, but it's in no way cheap, considering their typical budget. This fee could rise to around $10m in the future, which gives Charlotte a lot of flexibility to replace him, especially now MLS clubs can sign each other's players for money.

July 14 €50m ($58.5m) Carreras is a tall, physical, rumbling fullback who drives into space with a powerful stride; from a stylistic point of view, think Marcos Alonso in attack. He's arguably better defensively than he is going forward, which likely makes him a good counterbalance to Trent Alexander-Arnold on the other flank. Benfica have done brilliantly to hold out for Carreras' full release clause and, 18 months after signing him for less than €10m, have quintupled their investment.

€2m ($2.3m) A Leverkusen stalwart, Tah has a career trajectory that suddenly shot upwards in 2023-24, when he expertly marshalled the back line to an unbeaten Bundesliga title run. The role Xabi Alonso curated for him was very specific, at the heart of a back three, which brought out his best. It'll hurt to lose the Germany international for free. Clearly, Bayern are convinced Tah is the plug-and-play answer to their central defensive issues, but they'll have to get more out of him, over a longer period, than Leverkusen did for that to be the case. There's reportedly a big signing-on fee (€15m) and big wages (over €200,000 per week) being committed to this deal, so don't be fooled into thinking Tah has come particularly cheap. He was due to join on July 1, but Bayern paid a small fee to bring the transfer forward for the Club World Cup.

June 6 €25m ($28.3m) After months of negotiations, Inter and Marseille reached an agreement on Luis Henrique in time for him to represent the at the Club World Cup. The €25m fee might seem a touch low for the Brazilian, but L'OM's bargaining position was weak, given they had to sanction his departure before mid-June in order to avoid a financial breach. Curiously, Luis Henrique arrived at the club while they were managerless, with Simeone Inzaghi having left for Saudi Arabia. He likely would have been set for an adaptation to wing-back under the now former boss, but now? We must wait and see.

June 5 €15m ($17m) Two years ago, Veiga became a flash-point topic in football. A rising star in LaLiga, fresh off a breakout campaign with Celta Vigo, he opted to join Saudi Arabian outfit Al Ahli over Napoli on a reported annual salary of €12m, became one of the first young or prime-age players to make such a choice, and drew staunch criticism for it -- notably from Toni Kroos, who labelled it "embarrassing." Now Veiga returns to Europe, having helped Al Ahli win their first Asian Champions League crown. In signing him, FC Porto have elevated their midfield in time for the Club World Cup for an extremely reasonable fee.

June 4 £30m ($40.4m) Delap caught the eye in his first Premier League campaign despite his team's overall struggles and eventual relegation. He scored 12 goals for a team that collected just 25 points, bulldozing his way into shooting positions and running the channels nonstop. While there's no guarantee the 22-year-old adapts to a top club and elevates this Chelsea squad, taking advantage of his £30m release clause was a no-brainer. There's just no downside to this deal for the Blues: He'll either make an impact, or they'll easily move him on ... probably for more money.

June 3 £12.5m ($16.9m) Kelleher's long-awaited move to become a Premier League No. 1 has arrived. He was the perfect deputy at Liverpool, stepping in and playing to an extremely high level when Alisson was injured, yet never kicking up a fuss when sent back to the bench. There's only so long you can keep a player like that until they want and deserve more. Brentford have pulled off a masterstroke in nabbing him. A £12.5m initial fee looks like a steal, and while add-ons could take the deal up to £18m, it's still low given the Republic of Ireland international's age (26) and proven quality. In sending Mark Flekken to Bayer Leverkusen and replacing him with Kelleher, the Bees have upgraded between the sticks.

June 2 €22.2m (£18.5m, $25m) Essugo was tucked into a larger deal that also takes 18-year-old winger (€52m) to Chelsea in 2026. He's the lesser-hyped of the two, although he did make waves when he made his Champions League bow aged 16 in 2021. He's an energetic, aggressive defensive midfielder who covers ground, plugs gaps and tackles resolutely. The loan move to Las Palmas this season has helped him get a foothold in the senior game, and his performances suggest Chelsea got the better end of the deal.

June 1 €59.4m (£50m, $67m) Madrid moved quickly and beat off a host of competition to secure Huijsen's signature following his 2024-25 breakout campaign in the Premier League. The Spaniard's comfort with the ball at his feet, slaloming dribbles and genuine two-footedness have marked him out as one of the best young center backs in the world; his style reminds of a young Gerard Piqué.

Bournemouth got to enjoy him for only one season, but in acquiring him from Juventus and accepting a release clause of £50 million, they would have been under no illusions as to whether this was a long-term marriage. Perhaps the big move has come sooner than expected, but they've been well compensated nonetheless.

€12m (£10m, $13m) We were all set to add Alexander-Arnold's name to the list of remarkable Real Madrid free transfers -- but the FIFA Club World Cup has scuppered that. In the end, paid around €12 million to usher in the right-back before this summer's tournament, cementing the fact they're taking it incredibly seriously. Time might prove this to be an excessive move from Madrid, but at the end of the day, they've still signed a stunning player for a small fee. Liverpool's grade gets bumped up from an F as they at least got something in return for their academy graduate.

€35m (£29m, $38m) Liverpool have doubled down on their policy of keeping the goalkeeper's room stacked with talent by bringing in the best shot stopper under 25 in Europe. Mamardashvili looks like the second coming of Gianluigi Donnarumma; his big, burly frame, incredible reflexes and aerial dominance all impress. It should be noted, though, that he shares the Italian's lack of finesse when passing the ball. The transfer fee looks great for the Reds and bad for Valencia. Part of the reason it's cheap is because got to keep him for one extra season on loan, but history will read: Mamardashvili for €35 million. And it'll be seen as an absolute bargain.

€34m (£28.5m, $38.5m) "I think he's going to be a genius." Neymar's verdict of Estêvão will be music to the ears of Chelsea, who committed when the player was just 17 years old to a deal that could rise to around €67 million ($76m) if add-ons are met. He's ridiculously exciting to watch, already has tons of first-team experience under his belt and led the Brazilian top tier with 22 goal contributions in 2024.

Free Eyebrows were raised when Bayern signed Dier from Tottenham Hotspur in January 2024. After all, he couldn't crack Ange Postecoglou's XI, so how was he going to get game time in Munich? But 18 months and more than 45 appearances later, he departs well regarded. In fact, given the long-term injuries are dealing with at center back, they'll probably end up missing him. Monaco will be counting on Dier's experience to guide a team that is, by design, young and full of promise. He looks a good fit for that elder statesman role.

The window is open, clubs are doing business and players are on the move. Here is how we rate the biggest deals.

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