It’s our favorite time of the year. Transfer grades are back, running through the next couple weeks of newsletters. We’re going to cover all 20 Premier League teams this week, and the 20 most interesting teams in Europe next week, with grades coming out in batches of 5.

As usual, we’ll go in mostly alphabetical order, with some minor adjustments to spread out big teams. Today’s grades are:

We’ve tried our best to find accurate information about add-ons, loan fees, and youth player transfers, but there isn’t detailed and accurate reporting on every single transfer. Because the achievability of add-ons varies so much, they’re just added in full to everyone’s totals.

Loan obligations or options to buy are not included in fees. We’ll include them in the window they’re executed, since that’s what matters for SCR. Several players who were loaned in with buy obligations over the last two windows are included here, since this summer is when those transfers were executed. All fees are in GBP for consistency, but the exchange rates change daily, so if a transfer seems a touch off what you’ve heard, that’s why.

That’s all the up front stuff you need to know. Let’s get into it:

This is a good summer where the champs attempted to solidify their window at running it back, maybe a couple more times. They improved their midfield with one of the best in the league in Bruno Guimaraes. Yes, he was expensive, and yes, he’s not so young. But he’s fucking great and can cover for all three midfield spots.

The other major transfer this summer was Christos Tzolis, who already looks better than his price after a few matches. It was a risk bringing him from Belgium, but the price reflects that, and the recruitment department has to be over the moon at his immediate impact.

They missed out on a star dust transfer they were clearly in the market for, but the window filled all the major needs and provided serious depth once again. —TK

Parachuting in with some very minor criticism. That lack of a superstar attacker could once again end up being the difference between winning the Champions League and not. Ezri Konsa, who is 28, is an overpay that felt forced by William Saliba’s injury. These are hardly problems, Arsenal are still the best team in the league and should remain competitive for trophies with this core for several years, but those are two slight misses for me. —KM

Ted: B+ | Kim: B | Hayden: A

Martinelli’s transfer fee is important for SCR purposes beyond the money, but it’s a hefty number. That’s good money for late-career Trossard, who gave everything he had to the team. The Kiwior deal is undersized because there was a loan fee attached to it before. Vieira is finally free of his perpetual loan cycle. Getting money to shift Norgaard off the books and replace him with Bruno G is pretty great.

The bigger question is what happens to Nwaneri going forward, but presumably a lot of that depends on how he performs this season.

It’s hard to see how this window would have been much better from the sales side. —TK

Ted: A | Kim: A | Hayden: A

Arsenal patched their holes and had a reasonable net spend for a club that won the league and went to the Champions League final last season. They bought a couple older players, but because they avoided overspending, they should have plenty in the bank to get younger next summer.

Overall grade: B+

I don’t love every deal on here, but this volume of work plus quality of players adds a degree of difficulty that we rarely see in top flight men’s football. They sold almost everyone notable this window and still ended up with a pretty decent squad. —TK

This set of signings feels like an excellent balance between immediate stability and long-term upside for Villa. Jackson, Gomes, Harwood-Bellis and Suzuki are younger but well-established replacements for their departed top players, while Manzambi and Mbaye are higher risk, but with world class ceilings. I like this window a lot. —KM

Ted: A- | Kim: A | Hayden: B+

These are fantastic sales, even baking in the accounting weirdness. I’ve been hard on Villa for ages, but this is an outstanding window and incredibly busy. Well done to everyone involved. —TK

I have a lower grade than Ted despite these being good deals for the money and ages of the players involved simply because it’s so many top players sold in one window. Ideally, Villa would have done some better long-term planning to avoid disrupting their team so much. Even though I love all their sales and buys from a pure market value and risk management perspective, Villa might finish bottom half just because of the timing. —KM

Ted: A+ | Kim: A- | Hayden: A-

Thrust into an impossible situation between SCR concerns and how many top players wanted to move on, Villa managed the chaos as well as anyone could have reasonably hoped. It probably sounds absurd to give a team a good grade when they did a firesale after qualifying for Champions League, but Villa did incredibly well under the circumstances.

Overall grade: A-

These fees are a steal in the current market for both Antonio Silva and Alvaro Rodriguez, two players with high upside where Bournemouth did not pay a high upside price. My only real question is how well everyone fits in with Marco Rose’s style and whether they needed more depth going into a European campaign. I lean toward yes, but the starting XI is good. —TK

I also like the two headline buys, but Bournemouth have really been getting away with running a thin defensive group for a bit, and they’re counting on huge internal improvement from youngsters Veljko Milosavljević and Julio Soler to avoid running into trouble. I’m concerned about what happens if they don’t get 38 games from Adrien Truffert again. —KM

Ted: B+ | Kim: B+ | Hayden: B

Those certainly are footballers who left Bournemouth. Jimenez’s exit was forced after he was provisionally suspended from English football pending an investigation for allegedly sending inappropriate messages to a minor. Sinisterra initially joined for £20m and was loaned out with an option to buy for £10m, which was later negotiated down. Traore also cost an initial £20m and never pushed his value back up to that level after several loans. Those were both pretty big flops. Losing Senesi on a free hurts a lot.

The big deal for Bournemouth is who they didn’t sell, with Alex Scott and Eli Junior Kroupi sticking around despite getting linked to huge moves. That’s a pretty big W. But all of their sales represent pretty significant misses in some way or another. —KM

Ted: B- | Kim: C | Hayden: B-

Bournemouth probably felt they had a solidly top half team, but not one good enough to push the big sides for Champions League, and acted accordingly. This window is fine.

Overall grade: B-

Sangare might be the best value signing that anyone has made this summer, and we could justify giving Brentford an A for that alone. He’s a top athletic defensive midfielder who’s also a very good carrier and a good enough passer for that profile. He already looks like one of their best players, and I suspect he’ll be sold for double what they paid for him in a year or two.

Schuster is an aerial monster. He’s just 20 and will probably take some time to settle in, but looks like an outstanding value buy. Anthony is reliable, affordable, domestic-trained wing depth.

I am a bit more skeptical of Diouf, who definitely has a high ceiling with his outstanding athleticism, work rate, and solid left-footed crossing ability. But he was not a great defender or creator for West Ham last season, and this is a rather expensive tools bet. There’s obviously a set of dice rolls where he turns out to be worth all that and more, but I think just as many where he’s straight up not good enough to be a contributor for Brentford. —KM

Ted: A- | Kim: A- | Hayden: A

Pinnock got promoted with Brentford, and Onyeka was signed in their promotion season. The Bees have outgrown them, and thank them for their service.

It’s a bit surprising to see Brentford get through this summer without making a big sale. They have quite a few top contributors who are in their mid-20s and have been good for a couple years now, so it wouldn’t be surprising if several big sales were coming in the next couple windows. —KM

Ted: C | Kim: C | Hayden: B-

Signed some good youngsters, didn’t lose any stars or take a loss on any previous transfers. Pretty solid.

Overall grade: B

It’s always slightly tricky to evaluate Brighton windows, because there are a lot of side bets going on that aren’t immediately relevant to the team at hand. How many of the deals listed above are supposed to have an impact right now? Hopefully at least a couple, because Brighton sold big players very well, and consistently have an injury list a mile long.

The big gamble here is Luka Vuskovic, who has hit the ground in England running, even if it’s not that fast. He does everything you want a CB to do except set land-speed records, but they needed to replace van Hecke. It’s early, but could Vusko be an upgrade? —TK

Brighton really has a thing for big fellas. In addition to Vuskovic, they’ve replaced Carlos Baleba with Chema Andrés, who’s 6’4” (193cm). New backup center back Michael Svoboda is 6’5” (195cm). However aerialpilled you think the league at large is, everyone else has nothing on the Seagulls.

Azeez was one of the best players in the Championship last season, but didn’t have big transfer hype due to already being 24. He’s a very good dribbling lefty, so a great rotation player with Yankuba Minteh, and one that could soften the blow of a future Minteh sale. —KM

Ted: B? | Kim: B+ | Hayden: B

Brighton are so good at this. Getting that much for Baleba after a down year where he was one of the worst passers in the league is nuts. Getting that much for Van Hecke with one year left on his contract is nuts. Rushworth was never thought of as a top prospect until last year. This org is a machine. —KM

Ted: A | Kim: A+ | Hayden: A

It’s a typical Brighton window. They made a profit, got younger, and did not obviously get any worse. The kings of the transfer market as a business operation. I’m sure their fans would love to see it turn into some more consistent football, but there’s nothing to criticize about this.

Overall grade: A-

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.” If you’re interested in football betting, check out this post on why we started Variance Betting.