This week, Manchester City made a £106million offer for Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson. It was not accepted by Forest, but City are expected to keep pushing, up to and likely beyond the point at which Anderson, a central midfielder, becomes the most expensive player in the history of British football.
Whether he does or not is largely academic. Anderson will shortly become the latest midfielder of his profile to command an enormous fee, in a marketplace which has traditionally placed the greatest premium on attacking output.
A quick history to make that point.
Since May 1986, when Mark Hughes left Manchester United to join Barcelona for a milestone £2.3million, the British transfer record has increased 20 times. Of the players on that list, Rio Ferdinand is the only defender and, before 2023, Juan Sebastian Veron arguably the sole ‘complete’ midfielder. Everyone else? Either an outright goalscorer or some other form of overtly attacking player.
In January 2023, Chelsea broke with the tradition, spending £106.8million on Enzo Fernandez of Benfica. The Argentinian has become a goalscoring midfielder at Chelsea — 2025-26 was the first time the now 25-year-old reached double figures in a league campaign in his career — but at the time of the transfer had a more rounded profile for his position and, three and a half years on, his signing looks like the beginning of a pattern.
That July, Arsenal signed Declan Rice from West Ham United for £105million. Later in the same transfer window, Chelsea bought Moises Caicedo of Brighton and Hove Albion for £115m.
Most likely, if and when Anderson completes a move away from Forest, it will be for even more money.
Declan Rice moved from West Ham to Arsenal before the 2023-24 season (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
So why are central midfielders now considered premium talents?
There are theories on that, rather than definitive answers, and it’s also not clear whether this is a new normal, a trend or an anomaly.
Speaking to people who work within football at scouting and executive level, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their positions, it’s clear that there is now more tactical emphasis on midfielders. That’s the easiest aspect to explain.
The prevalence of 4-3-3 formations — or variations of it — across European football is one factor. The system depends on midfielders with broad attribute ranges, without which they cannot function as intended.
In addition, modern football matches tend to be won in the transitional phases, when teams move between attack and defence, or vice versa, favouring those players able to have an impact in as many ways as possible. The days of two-man midfields, within which the defensive and attacking aspects of the game were shared down the middle, have been over for a long time.
Rice is a pertinent example of that.
Last season, the data from his Premier League performances places him in the 90th percentile or above (10 per cent or fewer performed better than him) for progressive carries, carries into the opposition’s final third, chances created from attacking set-pieces, aerial duels won and blocked shots.
It’s a simplified point but, obviously, there’s clear value in a midfielder able to do the work that, previously, was the responsibility of two or three players. The prevalence of pressing in modern football also adds to the tasks that now fall on a midfielder’s shoulders. The greater tendency to build up from the back, with short passing through the midfield, necessitates a higher level of technical ability, too.
“A player who can contribute goals, who can press and run back over big distances, who can contribute at defending set pieces; they can help the team do much better in a lot of different parts of the game, more so than any other position,” a scout for a Premier League club tells The Athletic. “And they probably also have the sort of character and leadership that there is a scarcity of.”
So far, so simple; players who do more, cost more.
Other theories presented include the prevalence of data.
As that industry has grown, it has become much easier to quantify the impact of players who do not score a lot of goals or provide many assists. For instance, among midfielders in Europe, Anderson makes more ball recoveries per 90 (99th percentile) than almost anyone else. His progressive passing is similarly impressive, ranking him in the 94th percentile among similar midfielders.
Relatively simple data points are obviously not a basis alone upon which to make a nine-figure transfer offer, but they can be part of the justification.
Previously, as recently as 20 years ago, players with contentious valuations could be subject to “Yeah, but what does he actually do?” conversations. The result being that a midfielder who was not scoring goals or barging opponents into the pitchside advertising boards was often dismissed, or otherwise the subject of a culture war.
Benfica made a huge profit on Enzo Fernandez when he was sold to Chelsea after just six months in Lisbon (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
That does not often happen anymore. Data still has blind spots, but it describes vividly what a player does and makes compelling arguments for spending heavily on midfielders who can multi-task.
However, as relevant as those justifications are, it’s premature to pronounce central midfielders as the most valuable commodity in the game. That does not bear scrutiny. After all, the transfer records in England (Alexander Isak), Spain (Neymar), Italy (Cristiano Ronaldo), Germany (Harry Kane) and France (Neymar) all involve goalscoring centre-forwards.
That’s possibly why, for now, it’s wiser to see this £100million-and-above trend as more of a moment in time, or at least as a function of many different factors.
With just a few notable exceptions, major clubs no longer sell to each other. Unless there’s a release clause or a special circumstance, teams that consider themselves Champions League contenders barely trade with their contemporaries at all. The effect is to create a layer of talent at the top of the game that is virtually unattainable, shifting the focus of demand down the food chain.
But that runs into another issue.
Football’s commercial age, particularly in England, has created a powerful middle class. Neither Rice nor Caicedo were playing for contending clubs in 2024, but both West Ham and Brighton, by virtue of broadcasting revenue or, in the latter’s specific case, the quality of their recruitment, possessed the financial resilience to name a price and then stick to it.
Often, football is described as a game of haves and have-nots. Rightly so. But at its summit, it’s more of a battle between the outrageously wealthy and the impossibly so, meaning that the days of, for instance, a club of Forest’s scale being forced to hand over Anderson for a pittance are over.
When Fernandez was a Benfica player, they were not protected by an enormous broadcasting contract or by billionaire owners. The Portuguese club are actually majority-owned by fans, but have long been one of the best sellers in world football and — ultimately — had the muscle to demand that Chelsea pay three times as much for Fernandez as they spent to sign him from River Plate of Argentina just six months previously.
There were commonalities across those examples: a player in high demand, capable of fulfilling the modern tactical function of a central midfielder, his value being accentuated by that scarcity and elite clubs’ unwillingness to trade with each other. But also, as a final multiplier, the selling teams’ ability to write long, strong contracts and either demand that they be respected or ask for a huge sum in exchange.
This is not necessarily a new era. It’s not even definitely something that will repeat beyond the Anderson saga. But it is still reflective of enough real change to be worth paying attention to.
