Jose Mourinho has accused Arsene Wenger of buying his way to the Premier League title, but Sky Sports’ figures revealed it’s the Chelsea boss who has spent the most in the transfer window in the last three seasons.
Arsenal Boss Arsene Wenger Speaks About Jose
Mourinho, in another one of his clever moves to unsettle his rivals ahead of the start of the Premier League season, claimed Arsenal were spending their way into the title contention and Wenger should have no excuses if his side misses out again at winning the domestic crown.
Arsenal last won the Premier League title in the 2003–04 season and have finished runner-ups just once afterwards.
However, Mourinho said the amount of money his London rivals spent in buying new players, such as Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez, Danny Welbeck, Mathieu Debuchy and Petr Cech in the last three seasons, should now make them favourites to mount a serious challenge for the title.
“If you add up the amounts clubs have spent in the last three or four years I think maybe you will find a surprise,” Mourinho said in the Guardian recently.
“If you put Ozil plus Alexis Sanchez, plus Chambers, plus Debuchy, you will find a surprise.
“It’s a fantastic squad with good players, fantastic goalkeeper, they are more than ready to be a title contenders.
“Get a calculator. That is the easiest thing, it leaves no space for speculation. If you want to be honest, objective and pragmatic it is the easiest job for a manager to do.”
So Sky Sports followed Mourinho’s instructions and calculated both clubs’ spendings on new players, but the figures showed that it is actually Chelsea who have spent the most during the period in question.
Below shows the reported summary from Sky Sports’ data:
Chelsea Spending Figures
2013/14: Willian £32m, Nemanja Matic £21m, Andre Schurrle £18m, Kurt Zouma £12.5m, Mohamed Salah £11m, Marco van Ginkel £8m, Christian Atsu £3.5m, Cristian Cuevas £1.7m, Isaiah Brown £209,000*.
2014/15: Diego Costa £32m, Cesc Fabregas £30m, Juan Cuadrado £23.3m, Felipe Luis £15.8m, Loic Remy £8.5m, Mario Pasalic £3m*.
2015/16: Asmir Begovic £8m, Nathan £4.5m*, Danilo Pantic £1.25m*.
Total: £234.259m.
Arsenal Spending Figures
2013/14: Mesut Ozil £42.5m, Matt Macey £100,000*.
2014/15: Alexis Sanchez £35m, Calum Chambers £16m, Danny Welbeck £16m, Mathieu Debuchy £12m, Gabriel Paulista £11.2m, David Ospina £3m, Krystian Bielik £2.4m.
2015/16: Petr Cech £10m.
Total: £148.2m
*Reported fee
