Being successful in the transfer market isn’t all about putting your money where your mouth is — you also need to be a dab hand at selling a player or two.

Perhaps more crucial than ever before in the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) era, generating funds from player trading can go a long way to helping a club stay competitive in future seasons, especially if they buy well.

Already this summer, Wolves have made a new record sale in the £62.5million deal taking Matheus Cunha to Manchester United but not every club have broken their old record so recently.

Here, The Athletic’s Premier League writers take a trip down memory lane to run through every side’s record departure.

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Arsenal

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain to Liverpool, £35m, August 2017

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain became Arsenal’s record sale eight years ago. Over time, that has seen more scrutiny put on their ability to sell players for fees that other clubs seem to receive with ease.

An emphasis was placed on that last summer, with the sales of Emile Smith Rowe to Fulham (£28m potentially rising to £34m) and Eddie Nketiah to Crystal Palace (£25m potentially rising to £30m).

Those sales were consistent with Arsenal’s best since Oxlade-Chamberlain’s departure, as they were academy players reaching an age where they needed regular football. Alex Iwobi to Everton in 2019 (£28m potentially rising to £34m), Joe Willock to Newcastle United in 2021 (£25m) and Folarin Balogun to Monaco in 2023 (£25m potentially rising to £34.4m) are the standouts.

Arsenal still need to improve when it comes to selling players they had previously signed for the first team, although that could be easier said than done. Most players they have signed over the years tend to spend their best years at the club and are on a downward trajectory when it is time for them to leave, which makes commanding a high fee difficult.

Even so, the record sales across the league’s top teams show they can still improve as a selling club.

Art de Roché

Aston Villa

Jack Grealish to Manchester City, £100m, August 2021

The sale of Jack Grealish to Manchester City in 2021 was a landmark moment in Aston Villa’s history. At first, it was a sore subject — many Villa supporters are still not over their homegrown hero leaving — but the record fee enabled the club to regenerate and, later down the line, provide Unai Emery with the initial tools to lay down his foundation.

Essentially, receiving £100million in pure bookable profit allowed Villa to spend more than any other club in the 2021-22 season while staving off the threat of PSR for the next few years, as losses did not breach the threshold.

Although it hurt at first, Villa could accelerate its ambitions to improve the squad due to the funds received.

Jacob Tanswell

Bournemouth

Dominic Solanke to Tottenham Hotspur, £65m, August 2024

Bournemouth were once ridiculed for spending £20million on Solanke from Liverpool, owing to going his first 39 league games without scoring and clearly toiling for confidence and a settled role in Eddie Howe’s side, which was relegated in Solanke’s first full year.

The striker, however, gradually flourished. The next four seasons saw continued progress, rewiring his game in the Championship before, especially in Bournemouth’s second campaign after winning promotion, fulfilling his long-promised potential under Andoni Iraola. The England international scored 19 league goals, securing Bournemouth a club record fee, even if 20 per cent of that went to his former club, Liverpool.

Bournemouth quickly reinvested, spending the money on their own club-record signing and Solanke’s replacement, Porto’s Evanilson, for £40million.

Jacob Tanswell

Brentford

Ivan Toney to Al Ahli, £33.6m, August 2024

Ivan Toney is one of the most important players in Brentford’s modern history.

He broke the Championship goalscoring record in the 2020-21 season as Brentford earned promotion via the play-offs. The striker then scored 12 goals in Brentford’s first season in the Premier League, including all of them in crucial victories over Norwich and Burnley.

The following year, he scored 20 goals in 33 appearances as Brentford finished ninth and he was capped by England. Toney could have been sold for a lot of money that summer but an eight-month ban from the Football Association for breaching betting rules damaged his career.

Toney joined Saudi Pro League side Al Ahli in August 2024 after he had entered the final 12 months of his contract. It felt cheap for a player who had produced some important moments for England on their way to the European Championship final that summer after returning from his suspension.

The 29-year-old scored 23 goals in the Saudi Pro League last season, which was more than Karim Benzema. Only Cristiano Ronaldo had a better record. He helped Al Ahli to win the Asian Champions League, too.

Brentford received a decent amount of money for Toney but his true value was a lot more.

Jay Harris

Brighton

Moises Caicedo to Chelsea, £115m, August 2023

Not just a record sale for Brighton, but a Premier League record as well.

The price kept on rising for Moises Caicedo until Chelsea signed the Ecuador international defensive midfielder in the August 2023 transfer window.

They had pursued Caicedo in the January 2023 window, along with Arsenal, but Brighton were not interested in losing their rising force during that season. Bids by Chelsea of £55m and an opening offer from Arsenal of £60m, which increased to £70m, were all rejected.

Seven months later, Caicedo became one of the country’s most expensive transfers of all time.

A significant sell-on could provide a further boost to the profit on a player bought two and a half years earlier for £4m from Independiente del Valle in his homeland. The deal is the biggest success story of the global recruitment policy that has been such an effective tool in Brighton’s development as a club.

Andy Naylor

Burnley

Wilson Odobert to Tottenham Hotspur, £25m (plus £5m in add-ons), August 2024

Odobert’s spell at Burnley only lasted one season but he was one of the few players who enhanced their reputations during the 2023-24 campaign when they were relegated to the Championship.

The 20-year-old arrived at Turf Moor from Troyes as part of Vincent Kompany’s recruitment drive focused on signing young, exciting attacking talent following promotion from the Championship.

The winger made 34 appearances, scoring five goals, and, despite the team’s struggles, offered a number of glimpses of his talent with his speed, quick feet and dynamic ball carrying.

It was not surprising that he secured a move back to the Premier League and Burnley agreed a deal which saw them make a substantial profit — he’d signed for a deal worth around £10million — on the France Under-21 international. His first season at Tottenham was derailed by injury but he has the potential to be an elite attacker.

Andy Jones

Chelsea

Eden Hazard to Real Madrid, £89m (plus add-ons), June 2019

No one of a Chelsea persuasion were happy to see Hazard leave for Real Madrid in 2019, but it has to go down as one of their best-ever negotiations and not just because it was for such a large sum.

Hazard had just one year left on his contract when Chelsea conceded they could not stop the Belgian from fulfilling his dream of playing for his idol (Real Madrid coach) Zinedine Zidane at the Bernabeu any more.

Despite this, Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia remained strong during discussions and managed to secure an extraordinary deal worth £89m plus add-ons that could take the final bill up to £150m.

Now, unfortunately, Hazard’s well-documented injury problems meant that he not only failed to live up to expectations at Real Madrid but Chelsea did not have all the add-ons triggered.

But while the final total has not been made public, it went into triple figures due to the trophies the La Liga side won during Hazard’s time there. This includes winning the 2024 Champions League final, even though he had retired earlier in the season.

Given Hazard played just 76 times for Real Madrid, Chelsea certainly came out of this transfer much the better of the two clubs.

Simon Johnson

Crystal Palace

Aaron Wan-Bissaka to Manchester United, £50m, June 2019 

The departure of Wan-Bissaka to Manchester United was excellent business for Palace, despite how impressive the right-back had been over the course of a whirlwind few years after his sudden emergence into the first team.

That money helped to fund a £30million academy redevelopment and Palace replaced him by reinstating Joel Ward to take the first-choice right-back spot before also bringing back Nathaniel Clyne as a free.

Wan-Bissaka, now at West Ham United, has not achieved as much as might have been hoped and that makes the fee stand up well, but he has still enjoyed a successful career and won the player of the year award in his debut season in east London.

Meanwhile, Bayern Munich triggered Michael Olise’s release clause last July in a deal which should also see Palace receive £50m.

After three incredibly successful seasons in south London, where he emerged as one of the most coveted talents in the world, Olise has continued to thrive.

Palace have adapted well to life without him but now he has senior France caps to his name, and is thriving in both the Bundesliga and in the Champions League.

Olise was always destined for greatness and his performances since leaving only make it tougher to take that his fee was so low relative to his talent.

Matt Woosnam

Everton

Romelu Lukaku to Manchester United, £75m (plus £15m in add-ons), July 2017

“If you took away all of Romelu Lukaku’s goals last season, we still would have finished seventh.”

That was Everton’s then director of football Steve Walsh’s attempt to rationalise the £75million sale of the club’s top Premier League scorer to Manchester United in the summer of 2017.

Walsh’s view of the Belgian attacker was far from favourable. In a 2022 interview with The Athletic, he revealed he had warned Jose Mourinho off the “big baby” striker.

But Everton missed Lukaku dearly.

His replacement, Sandro Ramirez, was a flop, while the purchase of three No 10s — Wayne Rooney, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Davy Klaassen — left the squad lacking balance. A bid for Olivier Giroud was thwarted, the Frenchman later revealed, when one of his mother’s friends claimed to have had premonitions that a switch to Goodison would end badly.

Everton limped to eighth the following season, with manager Ronald Koeman sacked that October. Maybe they could have done with Lukaku’s goals after all, Steve.

Patrick Boyland

Fulham

Aleksandar Mitrovic to Al Hilal, £45m, August 2023

It was the summer that the Saudi Pro League’s financial might was felt emphatically across Europe.

Karim Benzema, N’Golo Kante and Roberto Firmino all left big clubs in Spain and England for lucrative moves to the Middle East, and in west London, Fulham were unable to prevent the departure of their own star man.

Perhaps softening the blow of Aleksandar Mitrovic’s exit to Al Hilal in August 2023 was the £45million fee they received for the Serbian striker, who had scored 15 goals in all competitions the previous season.

Mitrovic jetted off to join Brazil star Neymar up front for Al Hilal while the West London club more than doubled their money on the £22m they initially paid Newcastle for the forward in 2018.

It is testament to Fulham’s recruitment that the following summer they recouped a similar fee, only marginally less at £42.3m, plus £4.2m in add-ons, from Bayern Munich for midfielder Joao Palhinha, who they signed from Sporting CP for a reported £17m.

Mitrovic, who made a total of 205 appearances for Fulham and scored 111 goals after signing from Newcastle United in 2018, had three years remaining on his contract when he left.

He did not play any matches during Fulham’s pre-season and boss Silva said the situation was affecting the team’s preparations for the new campaign.

He has provided a good goal return in Saudi Arabia, scoring 47 goals in 51 league games during his spell so far.

Greg O’Keeffe

Leeds

Raphinha to Barcelona, £55m, July 2022

There was never any doubt Raphinha would leave Elland Road in the summer of 2022. After two seasons, he had surpassed all expectations to become one of the Premier League’s best players and was too good for battling relegation with Leeds.

Raphinha’s impact on the pitch was enough to win hearts and minds in West Yorkshire, but his parting gift was a wonderful final flourish. His penalty at Brentford not only saved Leeds from the drop but also ensured Barcelona and his other suitors would not be able to take advantage of his relegation release clause.

Chelsea had money on the table first but Barcelona was always the Brazilian’s preference. He remains arguably the best player many Leeds have ever seen play for the club and has become a Ballon d’Or contender at the Camp Nou.

Beren Cross

Liverpool

Philippe Coutinho to Barcelona, £142m, January 2018

This is the most important transfer in Liverpool’s modern history and shaped the success of the Jurgen Klopp era.

A fan favourite because of his slick skills, incisive passes and long-range strikes, Coutinho’s exit in January 2018 felt like an inevitability. Barcelona’s relentless pursuit of the attacking midfielder the previous summer had led to the Brazil international handing in a transfer request, but Liverpool chose to stand firm.

While Coutinho found out that the grass is not always greener, Liverpool were able to reinvest the money banked from his sale to sign goalkeeper Alisson and centre-back Virgil van Dijk, which helped transform Klopp’s side into a European force.

Over the next two seasons, Liverpool won the Champions League and Premier League, with both additions playing a pivotal role. Whatever damage Coutinho did to his reputation during the saga has largely been forgotten because of the outcome.

Andy Jones

Manchester City

Julian Alvarez to Atletico Madrid, £64.4m (plus £17.1m in add-ons), August 2024

Manchester City have been able to overhaul their squad — bringing in eight first-team players for a combined outlay of around £290m since the start of the year — largely by making huge amounts from sales in the past few years.

Assorted academy talents have accounted for much of that but the departure of Julian Alvarez to Atletico Madrid provided them with a major injection of cash (which they decided not to reinvest at the time, anyway).

Alvarez’s time in Manchester was a bit of a whirlwind — he arrived for just £14m from River Plate in the summer of 2022, at the same time as Erling Haaland, and won the treble with City and the World Cup with Argentina in his first season. He then helped cover for injuries to Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne in his second season, but sensed that he was only ever going to be a back-up behind those kinds of big names.

Besides, there always seemed to be a desire among the family, who all moved with him to Manchester, to move to a warmer climate. His attributes made him a perfect signing for Diego Simeone and City were able to command a top fee.

Sam Lee

Manchester United

Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid, £80m, June 2009

Few clubs have strong-armed Manchester United into selling a player they want to keep, but then few clubs are Real Madrid.

It still took a full year for the Madrid industrial complex to prise Cristiano Ronaldo out of Sir Alex Ferguson’s hands through a public campaign that began in weeks leading up to United’s 2008 Champions League win.

United reported Madrid to FIFA but president Sepp Blatter’s only intervention was to bemoan “too much modern slavery” in football while urging United to sell.

Ronaldo agreed with Blatter’s characterisation and even though he resolved to stay at United that summer, he still wanted the move desperately, and the saga rolled on into the following season.

That December, after a loose-lipped Madrid director suggested a deal for Ronaldo was all but done, Ferguson memorably retorted: “You don’t think we’d get into a contract with that mob, do you? Jesus Christ. I wouldn’t sell them a virus.”

But he had entered a contract with Ronaldo: a verbal one, brokered at assistant Carlos Queiroz’s house in Lisbon the previous summer. There, Ferguson promised Ronaldo that if Madrid returned with a world-record fee at the end of the season, he would be allowed to leave. And deep down, he suspected they would.

Ferguson and Quieroz had long wondered how long they would be able to keep Ronaldo in Manchester, thinking five years maximum. That extra year made it six. “In that period, we won a European Cup and three league titles with him,” Ferguson later wrote in Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography. “I consider that a pretty good return.”

Mark Critchley

Newcastle United

Andy Carroll to Liverpool, January 2011, and Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest, July 2024, £35m

When Alan Pardew insisted that Carroll was not for sale during the January 2011 window, he did not anticipate Liverpool making a then-record £35m deadline-day offer for a British player.

Carroll had shown himself to be a force-of-nature striker but was still inexperienced, yet he found himself being whisked across to Merseyside in a helicopter as Liverpool rushed to find a replacement for Chelsea-bound Fernando Torres.

If Carroll’s departure typified the willingness of Newcastle to sell their prized assets under Mike Ashley’s ownership, Anderson’s transfer to Nottingham Forest in June 2024 was the very definition of a “PSR deal”.

Eddie Howe did not want to lose the academy graduate and Newcastle also felt forced to spend £20m on acquiring Odysseas Vlachodimos — a goalkeeper who had not featured on their wanted list — to ensure the sale of Anderson would take place before the June 30 deadline.

It was an act of desperation to ensure PSR compliance, and the effects are still being felt now.

Chris Waugh

Nottingham Forest

Brennan Johnson to Tottenham Hotspur, £47.5m, September 2023 

It was disappointing to hear a smattering of boos when Brennan Johnson came back to the City Ground as a Spurs player. Most of the crowd, however, stood to acclaim a player who had come through Forest’s academy and been serenaded with chants of “he’s one of our own”.

To put it in context, Forest’s previous record was Britt Assombalonga’s £15m transfer to Middlesbrough in 2017. Plus, the sale of Johnson was absolutely necessary at a time when Forest were breaching the Premier League’s spending rules, eventually incurring a four-point penalty.

Atletico Madrid had also bid for the Wales international whereas Brentford made numerous offers over the course of two seasons. Even on the night Johnson moved to Tottenham, the then-Brentford manager, Thomas Frank, was trying to persuade him to change his mind (ironic given where Frank now works).

Johnson could not be dissuaded and his winning goal for Spurs in the Europa League final last season fully justified that decision.

Daniel Taylor

Sunderland

Jordan Pickford to Everton, £30m, June 2017

Jordan Pickford was a diamond found in the mud of Sunderland’s disastrous 2016-17 season. Relegated from the Premier League with barely a whimper under David Moyes, the emergence of the gifted local boy in goal was as good as it got in a tailspin to the Championship.

That breakthrough campaign in the top flight had followed multiple loans in the EFL and convinced Everton that Pickford, then just 23 and yet to play for England, was worth a fee of up to £30million. All these years later, he remains the most expensive British goalkeeper of all time and a keen Sunderland fan.

The footnote to this is that the honour might not be Pickford’s for much longer. This summer’s sale of Jobe Bellingham to Borussia Dortmund might eventually turn out to be worth as much as £32m if add-ons are hit.

Philip Buckingham

Tottenham Hotspur

Harry Kane to Bayern Munich, £85m (plus £8.5m in add-ons), August 2023

Lots of people thought that Harry Kane would spend the rest of his career at Spurs. The centre-forward started out in their academy and eventually became a first-team star after spells on loan at Norwich City and Millwall.

Kane became a talisman for club and country with his ridiculous goalscoring exploits but he never won a trophy. The closest he came was the 2019 Champions League final. which Spurs lost to Liverpool.

Tottenham chopped and changed managers but despite all the upheaval, Kane continued to perform at a high level. Yet in the summer of 2023, he decided enough was enough.

Spurs had just sacked Antonio Conte and finished eighth, which meant that they would not be competing in Europe the following season. At the end of the transfer window, Kane joined Bayern Munich in a deal worth €100m.

Spurs fans were devastated but could not begrudge him the opportunity to win silverware with Bayern, which he did when they lifted the Bundesliga title last month.

Jay Harris

West Ham United

Declan Rice to Arsenal, £105m, July 2023

Former West Ham United manager David Moyes believes Rice’s £105million ($134.6m) departure to Arsenal in July 2023 was underpriced.

“When I see Arsenal supporters, I tell them they owe me £50m because we only got £100m for him,” said the Everton manager.

The 26-year-old scored two superb free kicks past Thibaut Courtois in Arsenal’s first leg quarter-final Champions League victory over Real Madrid, prompting the Emirates Stadium faithful to chorus: “Declan Rice, we got him half-price.”

Moyes always proclaimed it would take the “Bank of England” money for Rice to leave. The England international was in the last year of his contract, which prevented West Ham from recouping an even larger sum.

Roshane Thomas

Wolves

Matheus Cunha to Manchester United, £62.5m, June 2025

The ink is barely dry on Cunha’s contract at Manchester United, so it is impossible to say yet whether his move will be a success in football terms.

And even though we know the figures involved, the jury is still somewhat out on how good a deal it was for Wolves.

On one hand, inserting the release clause in the new contract Cunha signed in January ensured a profit of £18.5million on the fee they paid Atletico Madrid to sign the forward in 2023.

On the other hand, it is possible that selling Cunha on the open market might have brought in even more money, and if Cunha goes on to be a hit for United, then the fee paid could end up looking cheap.

Nevertheless, Wolves were content to resolve his future early in the window, providing both clarity and some guaranteed income.

Steve Madeley

(Top photos: Matheus Cunha, left, and Declan Rice; Getty Images)