Liverpool's spend, or perceived lack of, has been the cause of considerable ire among some supporters this past summer.
While the club opted to make a move on Darwin Nunez in a deal worth as much as £85m in the future, a club record, the lack of other big money additions, most notably in midfield, meant that blame for the slow start the Reds have made didn't take too long to reach the door of owners Fenway Sports Group.
The net spend at the end of the summer window, when taking into account the guaranteed sums paid for players, saw Liverpool have the fifth lowest in the Premier League. The purchases of Nunez, Calvin Ramsay and Fabio Carvalho were offset in no small part by the sales of the likes of Neco Williams, Sadio Mane, Marko Grujic and Takumi Minamino as Liverpool posted an £8.64m net spend for the window.
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For a period, Liverpool's low net spend in comparison to their rivals was seen as a way of them working smarter than the rest, finding rough diamonds and polishing them up to shine on the world stage. Mane, Mohamed Salah and Andrew Robertson have all been examples of such a strategy working.
But with the relentless pace of last season, where the club won the Carabao Cup, FA Cup, reached the final of the Champions League and came within 15 minutes of the Premier League title, the pedestrian start to the campaign has been viewed by some as being the result of a lack of investment in key areas in order to avoid such a lull.
The Liverpool model under FSG has been clear from very early on; grow a business, invest in strategy and spend what you can afford. It is a model that seeks financial stability and sustainability at the same time as seeking success on the pitch, with competitive success having become increasingly core to Liverpool's business model such has been their success in leveraging what they have achieved on the field into greater revenues off it.
Premier League clubs spent more than £2bn on acquiring talent in the summer window, smashing their previous record despite the social backdrop of an energy and cost of living crisis. Such pressures suffered by fans haven't diminished the spending power of Premier League clubs, nor has it diminished the will of fans to see their clubs spend heavily in the window in order to improve their chances of achieving success.
Chelsea spent £254m under the new ownership of the Todd Boehly-lead consortium, while Manchester United's new manager Erik ten Hag was backed in the market this summer to the tune of £216m by owners that are largely reviled by fans of the Old Trafford side. West Ham United had a net transfer spend of £148m, while Premier League new boys Nottingham Forest signed a colossal 21 players at a net spend of £139.5 to try and improve their chances of maintaining top flight status for the longer term.
But such spend has irked Javier Tebas, the chief executive of Spain's La Liga, who has taken aim at the Premier League for inflating transfer fees and creating an unstainable eco-system around the game at the highest level. In contrast to the Premier League's heavy spending, La Liga clubs shelled out a little over £400m for the same period. Tebas is now preparing a report to go to UEFA on the matter.
Speaking at a public presentation on LaLiga squad spending limits, Tebas said: "Premier League revenues are 1.8 times more than LaLiga or Bundesliga but this negative amount is 20 times more than the Spanish league which has very good financial control.
"Something doesn't make sense there, so what's happening? There's a lot of chequebooks coming out from clubs like Manchester City that sign a certain amount of players. Even the Championship lost €3bn over five years. The contributions of capital from club owners from Premier League clubs to compensate losses compared to La Liga.
"There were €277m in capital increases in La Liga. €2376m in Premier League which are contributions and loans provided. In the Championship it was €1385m. It would be normal if they signed twice as many players but they have spent much more than even that. This can only be possible if the owners get out their chequebooks and these are different models.
"I know the Premier League has a model to limit losses to £108m, do we want unsustainable models? What happens if the owners stop spending the money? We could let the sheiks and big companies come in here to buy out clubs. PSG can get more gas whenever they need to buy more players or use a related business.
"The football industry has changed and there's much more money. If there's no control then we could endanger the industry itself. The two competitions that are the most sustainable are La Liga and the Bundesliga and we have to really fight for sustainability.
"Ten years ago we weren’t like the Bundesliga but we are now. We’re going to put all this to UEFA and it is important for all the other European leagues as we want sustainable European football."
La Liga chiefs were strict in ensuring that Barcelona attempted to get their house in order, slashing the Catalan giants' salary cap for last season in order to force them to address their potentially catastrophic financial issues, where the club needed to call on a number of 'economic levers' that involved selling off parts of the business in order to stave off the problem that they had over a large amount of short-term debt. A new financing agreement was also reached with Goldman Sachs bank.
While Tebas' comments have sovereign wealth ownership in the crosshairs, with specific references to Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, the Premier League champions actually had the third lowest net spend in the transfer window at -£18.36m. The Citizens' revenues have grown in line with their on-field success and ability to grow revenue streams across the board. But while that figure focuses on one particular window it ignores the fact that City were investigated for alleged Financial Fair Play breaches back in 2019 when they were charged by UEFA before having the decision overturned in the Court of Arbitration for Sport. PSG, too, have been in trouble with regards to UEFA's FFP regulations in the recent past and will have €10m of European prize money withheld due to breaches.
City also appear on UEFA's FFP 'watchlist' that has recently been published, joined on it by Chelsea, West Ham United and Leicester City.
Tebas has been vocal on the issue of sustainability in football, with La Liga or any other major European league able to keep pace with the enormous growth of the Premier League and the revenue streams that come into the competition through huge broadcast deals, with the next domestic and international cycle worth £10bn.
While Liverpool owners FSG would no doubt like to see the caps on transfer spend reined in, the major revenue streams that come with the Premier League are something that they won't want to see diminish in any way.
The problem is that the Premier League's growth has been predicated on the clubs' willingness to reinvest that money into what happens on the pitch, with wages and transfer fees ballooning above the European average. That has made it into the behemoth that it is globally, and it is also what will likely see Tebas' calls fall on deaf ears.
With such huge spend the bubble that was predicted to burst by now continues to get bigger. But working towards driving down transfer fees may not be too far away, especially as more major teams fall under the ownership of private equity, where a return on investment is sought. That comes through revenues and prize money, and while major transfer spend is unavoidable, there could be more of a shift towards managing those kind of costs more effectively in order to maximise revenues.
Roman Abramovich's era at Chelsea changed the landscape in English football and the likes of City Football Group at Manchester City have followed suit. There may be room for another pivot towards addressing inflated transfer fees that would please FSG, although getting some clubs to sign from the same hymn sheet as Tebas may not be so easy.
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