By David Butler
Brentford’s Nathan Collins holds the honour of being the only outfield player to perform for all 3420 minutes of the 24/25 EPL season. Due to a host of reasons, in particular injury, it is very difficult to achieve this feat. In his book How to Win the Premier League: The Inside Story of Football's Data Revolution, Ian Graham outlines how difficult it is to achieve transfer market success; getting new signings on the pitch is a success in and of itself.
Graham suggests the 50% rule for transfers as a (low) benchmark for evaluating signings. Just to consider last season (rather than the two suggested) the paid for new signings in the league (excluding loans, goalkeepers and free transfers) played an average 1287 minutes - ~38% of EPL minutes. The median was ~32%. Only about 1/3rd of the 90 paid transfers inward on Transfermarkt get above the 50% minutes threshold.
There seems to be a little less risk when it comes to buying defensive players. These plyers top the list for minutes – Max Kilman, Nikola Milenković, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Dara O'Shea and Maxence Lacroix. Again, this is not to say these players performed well, but just that they performed.
Of course, many players are signed as back-ups and some are youngsters. So just looking at the big money spends there was success stories for Dominic Solanke, Leny Yoro and Pedro Neto. The big transfer failures to achieve minutes include Riccardo Calafiori, Ian Maatsen, Joshua Zirkzee and Igor Thiago.
So which player won the transfer window? Considering only minutes and estimated fee’s its probably Nikola Milenković (he did perform very well too this season). He only cost an estimated 15m and clocked up 3330 minutes. Other candidates include Ismaïla Sarr who also arrived for a similar low fee and played almost 80% of the minutes.
Brentford’s Nathan Collins holds the honour of being the only outfield player to perform for all 3420 minutes of the 24/25 EPL season. Due to a host of reasons, in particular injury, it is very difficult to achieve this feat. In his book How to Win the Premier League: The Inside Story of Football's Data Revolution, Ian Graham outlines how difficult it is to achieve transfer market success; getting new signings on the pitch is a success in and of itself.
Graham suggests the 50% rule for transfers as a (low) benchmark for evaluating signings. Just to consider last season (rather than the two suggested) the paid for new signings in the league (excluding loans, goalkeepers and free transfers) played an average 1287 minutes - ~38% of EPL minutes. The median was ~32%. Only about 1/3rd of the 90 paid transfers inward on Transfermarkt get above the 50% minutes threshold.
There seems to be a little less risk when it comes to buying defensive players. These plyers top the list for minutes – Max Kilman, Nikola Milenković, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Dara O'Shea and Maxence Lacroix. Again, this is not to say these players performed well, but just that they performed.
Of course, many players are signed as back-ups and some are youngsters. So just looking at the big money spends there was success stories for Dominic Solanke, Leny Yoro and Pedro Neto. The big transfer failures to achieve minutes include Riccardo Calafiori, Ian Maatsen, Joshua Zirkzee and Igor Thiago.
So which player won the transfer window? Considering only minutes and estimated fee’s its probably Nikola Milenković (he did perform very well too this season). He only cost an estimated 15m and clocked up 3330 minutes. Other candidates include Ismaïla Sarr who also arrived for a similar low fee and played almost 80% of the minutes.
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