Joao Felix madness means Chelsea have four of the top 10 Premier League player sales this summer

While Manchester United scour Europe for someone, anyone willing to pay anything for their unwanted cast of very talented footballers they’ve decided they have no use for, other Premier League teams have shown themselves to be adept at selling players to balance their books and boost their summer spending sprees, with Chelsea proving to be the masters.

The Blues have four player sales in this top 10, which includes transfers which have been agreed but not yet signed and sealed.

10) Bashir Humphreys: Chelsea to Burnley, £10m

That’s £10m of pure profit for a left-back with a market value of £6m, who made two appearances for Chelsea and was never going to make another one.

The cash has been immediately spent on teenage centre-back Mamadou Sarr, who started 27 games to help Strasbourg into the Conference League last season. As becomes clearer as you go down this page, Chelsea remain experts in filling their coffers.

9) Djordje Petrovic: Chelsea to Bournemouth, £22m rising to £25m

We’re entirely ready to accept that Chelsea may have sold their best goalkeeper. That may be Petrovic, it may be Kepa Arrizabalaga. But for us they’re all equally sh*t, average and alright, depending on what mood we’re in, so they may as well make a £10m PSR-boosting profit on Petrovic and have Robert Sanchez feebly tending goal again with the identically inadequate Filip Jorgensen in reserve if they’re really actually not going to sign a decent option to match the progression of the rest of the squad.

8) Lloyd Kelly: Newcastle to Juventus, £14.5m rising to £20m

We’re pleased for Kelly, who probably thought – as we did – that he would play more for Newcastle having made what looked like a decent move for both player and club last summer.

But after starting three of the opening five games following his free transfer, Kelly featured for just 96 minutes in the next 19 games before sealing a loan exit to Juventus.

And the key part he played for the Old Lady – nailing down a spot at the heart of their defence – suggests Newcastle may come to regret the obligation to buy that was enforced when a limited appearance-based condition was met. But without knowing the heights Kelly will reach in Serie A and beyond, Newcastle will currently be seeing this as a huge PSR win.

READ MORE: Every Premier League transfer and release confirmed in the summer of 2025

7) Yan Couto: Manchester City to Borussia Dortmund, £21m rising to £25m

Couto joins a list of 12 players, including Pedro Porro, Aaron Mooy, Jason Denayer, Jack Harrison and Douglas Luiz, that City have sold for a combined £113m having never made an appearance for club. Incredible.

Maximo Peronne was also sold this summer, to Como for £11.2m, having featured for just 20 minutes in a City shirt.

6) Anthony Elanga: Nottingham Forest to Newcastle, £52m rising to £55m

No other team in world football is paying that fee for Elanga. That definitely doesn’t mean it was wrong for Newcastle to pay it, before all of this Alexander Isak heartache it was the one area of the pitch where there was the biggest potential for improvement and he’s a very Eddie Howe player – direct, powerful and speedy.

But Forest must have been a tad surprised when Newcastle returned with an extra £10m after seeing their initial £45m bid knocked back for the Swede. He’s valued at £36m and cost them under £20m.

A penny for the thoughts of the Manchester United chief who opened the door to that sale to Forest in the summer of 2023 due to ‘reservations over Elanga’s ability to break down stubborn defences in a United team that had expectations to dominate possession during games’ before sacking that manager and hiring one whose modus operandi is dynamism in transition.

Now we think about it, United are the second team in world football who would have paid that fee for Elanga had that move not required a hilarious and embarrassing climbdown.

READ MORE: Is Anthony Elanga worth £55m? Only to Newcastle but that’s what matters

5) Bryan Mbeumo: Brentford to Manchester United, £65m rising to £71m

There was a time when mid-table Premier League sides were bullied into letting their prized assets leave for Manchester United. As soon as they came calling, that was that, with a club the size of Brentford expected to kiss rings and bow in appreciation of the Red Devils bestowing such honour on them by being interested in one of their players.

Not for the first time, nor we suspect the last, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the Ineos lads played their hand way too early. Brentford weren’t happy that they approached Mbeumo first, and when the forward then made it clear he only wanted the move to Old Trafford despite interest from Tottenham and Newcastle, the Red Devils created a situation for themselves where they either had to meet Brentford’s demand – which didn’t change despite contrary reports pushed by United – or flounce away from their top target to the great enjoyment of the masses who feed on evidence that a once-great club is great no longer.

They opted save face and were indeed ‘held to ransom’ despite Ratcliffe’s insistence that he wouldn’t be, paying some £18m over Mbeumo’s market value.

4) Noni Madueke: Chelsea to Arsenal, £48.5m rising to £50m

In our latest instalment of Both Things Can Be True, we see this as a good signing from Arsenal but also a very good sale by Chelsea. The Gunners wanted an option for both left and right wings, whose first thought is to take defenders on, at a good age with a high ceiling; Madueke is all those things.

And while the logic in coaching a player, watching them improve and then selling them before seeing whether they can fulfil their potential in favour of someone at the onset of what will likely be a very similar journey in Jamie Gittens is at best questionable and at worst a sign that Chelsea as a football club aren’t actually all that interested in developing young talent but buying and selling them until they uncover ready-made gems, on the face of it they have made close to £20m on a forward who got 20 goals and nine assists in 92 appearances for them.

READ MORE: Mbeumo overtaken as biggest Premier League overpay by Liverpool gamble

3) Luis Diaz: Liverpool to Bayern Munich, £65.5m

Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Jason Wilcox should take note. Weirdly, the best way to get the most amount of money for a footballer who wants to leave and you don’t particularly want at your football club for at least that reason and possibly others, isn’t to drop them to a bomb squad and announce to the world that you’re desperate to be rid of them.

The party line from Liverpool and Arne Slot for the majority of this transfer window, amid interest from Barcelona, Saudi Arabia and Bayen, was that they had ‘no plans’ to sell Diaz.

They also had no plan to offer him an improved contract, and will therefore have known that Diaz would likely push for an exit. But he went on tour with Slot and his teammates, at least providing interested clubs with the illusion of a possible harmonious future at the club if they fail to up the ante.

And Bayern did. After the Premier League champions rejected an opening bid of £58.6m from the Bundesliga giants, they’ve now accepted a £65.5m bid including add-ons, or 44% of an Alexander Isak, for a 28-year-old valued by Transfermarkt at £60m.

READ MORE: Liverpool’s Sterling sale could be best move of all in summer transfer masterclass

2) Jarell Quansah: Liverpool to Bayer Leverkusen, £30m rising to £35m

We have no way of finding this out/didn’t even try, but we posit that there has never been a greater transfer-fee-per-senior-start paid (yes, it’s a thing if we say so) than the £875,000 Bayer Leverkusen have spent on Quansah per appearance from the off under Jurgen Klopp and Arne Slot at Anfield.

Ibrahima Konate and Virgil van Dijk are admittedly a very good reason why Quansah’s not played all that much and it’s technically possible for the game time of the third best centre-back in the world to be limited in a similar manner.

But he wouldn’t be in many people’s top 50 as things stand and that was just too delicious a chunk of pure profit to turn down, with the Reds also safe in the knowledge that they can buy him back for £50m should his progression be as impressive as many of us thought it may be a year or so ago.

1) Joao Felix: Chelsea to Al Nassr, £26m rising to £44m

The guaranteed £26m fee brings the total spent by clubs acquiring what we don’t think anyone will disagree are Felix’s limited services to just over £180m.

After bizarrely spending £44m to sign him from Atletico Madrid last summer after a hugely underwhelming loan spell at Stamford Bridge the season before, Chelsea are miraculously set to make all of that money back thanks to Al Nassr, and could actually be up on the deal having already banked close to £5m from his six-month loan spell at AC Milan.

The Blues are also said to have wisely inserted a hefty sell-on clause into the deal with Al Nassr, as another wealthy football club thinking they can ‘fix’ Joao Felix is the third certainty after death and taxes.

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