This was the busiest week of the window — three transfer records in five days. Liverpool agreed what would be the biggest Ligue 1 sale to a foreign club, Nottingham Forest broke their own record, and Tottenham’s summer spending closed in on £400m. Four days remain before the window shuts.
Barcola to Liverpool for £120m
Bradley Barcola is moving from PSG to Anfield for £100m guaranteed plus £20m in add-ons, on a contract to 2031 wearing the number 29. If it completes on those terms it will be the largest sale in Ligue 1 history to a club outside France — bigger than Neymar’s move to Al-Hilal.
For FPL managers the side effect matters most: Barcola’s arrival threatens Cody Gakpo’s place, and we had flagged Gakpo as a differential as recently as Wednesday. Barcola’s debut looks realistic on 4 September.
Delap to Forest — a club record
Nottingham Forest are signing Liam Delap for £45m plus £5m in add-ons. That beats their previous record of £37.5m, set a year ago. The striker will sign a five-year deal, convinced by a conversation with Oliver Glasner.
The squad consequence: Igor Jesus, Forest’s highest-rated forward and owned by 4% of managers, now has his minutes in question.
Marmoush to Tottenham, Spurs near £400m
Omar Marmoush joins on loan with an obligation to buy, which Sky Sports put at £60m. He is Tottenham’s eighth signing of the summer and their second from Manchester City after Savinho. The two City deals together are worth around £135-140m, taking the club’s summer outlay close to £400m.
Chelsea and Villa swap
Thursday and Friday brought two transfers in opposite directions: Emiliano Martínez to Chelsea for £7.5m, and Nicolas Jackson to Aston Villa in a deal worth up to £65m. Martínez lost his place after Villa signed Zion Suzuki from Parma; Jackson arrives as Ollie Watkins’s replacement.
Watkins is Saudi-bound after all
This thread has now closed. Aston Villa accepted an offer of €58.4m plus €2m in add-ons, and Watkins is due to travel to Riyadh in the coming days. Reports put his Al Hilal salary at around £15m a year.
We wrote about this on Thursday as the case where our own model gets it wrong: a rating of 85 described an Aston Villa striker, not a player mid-transfer to Saudi Arabia. Watkins still sits in 8% of squads, and today is the last chance to act.
Bouaddi finally in the game
The transfer that opened this week — Ayyoub Bouaddi to Manchester City in a €100m package, the most expensive teenager in Premier League history — has now completed inside the game too. Bouaddi is listed in the FPL database as a City player at £5.5m and can be bought for the first time.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka (Aston Villa), Michele Di Gregorio (Bournemouth) and Hadjam (Brighton) have also been added.
What it means for your squad today
The Gameweek 2 deadline is 6.30pm today, so the split is simple.
Already buyable: Bouaddi (£5.5m), Wan-Bissaka, Di Gregorio and Hadjam — all on zero ownership, so this is territory for the brave.
Not in the game yet: Delap, Marmoush, Barcola, Jackson and Martínez are all still listed at their old clubs. None of them can help you this round, even if the clubs announce this afternoon.
Prices are finally alive: seventeen players have moved, against four on Wednesday. Six of those falls are Arsenal players ahead of Monday’s trip to Villa Park — the only fixture of the round rated at maximum difficulty on both sides.
Flags after the press conferences: Elliot Anderson and Ferdi Kadıoğlu are back to full availability. Morgan Gibbs-White (8.7% ownership, knee) and Moisés Caicedo remain flagged, with Jack Hinshelwood added. Ismaïla Sarr is out. The full list is in our Injury Centre, and every rating is in the AI Player Rankings.
How much is left
The window shuts at 11pm UK time on Tuesday 1 September. Clubs then have a two-hour grace period to file paperwork if the deal sheet was submitted in time, so some moves will only be confirmed on Wednesday morning.
The practical consequence for FPL: anyone changing clubs on Monday or Tuesday will only enter the game ahead of Gameweek 3. That is when it is worth sitting down with your squad properly.
This round-up covers the week from Monday 24 to Friday 28 August. Sources: Fabrizio Romano, Sky Sports, ESPN, This Is Anfield, TeamTalk, Goal, Yahoo Sports. Engine numbers are from Friday morning.