By Zach Slaton.

Zach is a freelance soccer writer and a Tomkins Times/Transfer Price Index contributor.  He currently writes for Forbes.com, and his work has appeared in Howler Magazine.  He’s run his own blog, A Beautiful Numbers Game, for more than two years.

A flurry of activity at the end of this summer’s transfer window punctuated what was the second most active window in recent memory (in terms of pounds spent at £498M/$778M), although net spend by clubs was a much tamer £224M/$350M according for Forbes’ Bobby McMahon. Readers of the The Tomkins Times and Transfer Price Index (TPI) blog know that both numbers matter.

The gross spend of nearly £500M is indicative of just how much player movement is going on in the league, as well as how much it costs to purchase a good player in today’s EPL.  Sure, there are a number of big ticket players like Robin Van Persie (£24M from Manchester United’s kitty) and Eden Hazard (£32M paid by Chelsea) that drive a good bit of this spending, but there’s also the rapid fire, smaller deals that get done on deadline day that help raise the total as well (see Manchester City’s swap of six players and net spend of £38M on the final day of the window).

This post, which examines spending and predicts the final league table, is for Subscribers only.

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