The most expensive uncapped English players ever has seven new additions this summer
The uncapped Englishman is back in favour thanks largely to Chelsea and Nottingham Forest. For years the most expensive was signed by Man Utd but no longer.
The days of Dean Richards dominating this particular quiz question after joining Spurs from Southampton for £8.1m are long gone. But who have followed in his footsteps?
These players were all uncapped at the time of their signing; whether they went on to represent England is immaterial.
20) Jordan Pickford (Sunderland to Everton, £25m to £30m, June 2017)
“The club’s only going forward, so it’s the best thing I can be doing,” said Pickford upon his move from Sunderland to Everton, who had just finished 7th in the Premier League and have come 8th, 8th, 12th, 10th, 16th, 17th, 15th and 13th in the subsequent eight campaigns.
His first England call-up came that August before his Three Lions debut in the November. No-one has been able to out-rave him between the sticks for his country in the meantime; Pickford is two clean sheets clear of Gordon Banks and just three behind David Seaman.
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19) Noni Madueke (PSV to Chelsea, £30m, January 2023)
Never has a club spent more money in a January transfer window, but even at £30m Madueke was only Chelsea’s fourth most expensive signing in a hectic month.
It was not entirely plain sailing but Arsenal saw enough to hand over £48.5m to bring in a player with seven England caps by that point.
18) Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (Leicester to Chelsea, £30m, June 2024)
It was probably not part of the grand recruitment push to offer four times as many Conference League as Premier League minutes but that was the fate which befell Dewsbury-Hall when he accompanied Enzo Maresca to Chelsea.
The Leicester Supporters’ and Players’ Player of the Season was lost in the shuffle in his first year at Stamford Bridge and sold to Everton before his second could get going.
17) Archie Gray (Leeds to Tottenham, £30m, July 2024)
Leeds were ‘heartbroken’ to lose the boyhood brilliance of an academy product Brentford bid £35m for and, according to some outlets, Tottenham paid up to £40m to sign.
Gray perhaps didn’t realise he was signing up for a ludicrously confusing season spent playing in about five different positions for a team which finished 17th and won the Europa League, but Ange Postecoglou knew he could lean on a teenager with 32 combined caps for England U15s, U16s, U17s, U19s, U20s and U21s.
16) Liam Delap (Ipswich to Chelsea, £30m, June 2025)
Ipswich knew and readily embraced their role as the stepping stone for Delap, even if they might have envisaged a fine full debut Premier League season for the striker being enough to keep them up.
The odds are that Delap would have jumped ship regardless with such a tempting release clause but a dozen goals in an unsuccessful fight against relegation confirmed it.
The only variable was which club would be fortunate enough to inherit the Manchester City academy product; Chelsea will do their best to ruin the slightly unhinged madman.
15) James McAtee (Manchester City to Nottingham Forest, £30m, August 2025)
He was “ready for a new challenge” – but there is a Manchester City buy-back clause – and Nottingham Forest had a bucketload of cash ready for the captain of England’s U21 Euros champions.
A whole heap of substitute minutes and a loan at relegated Sheffield United will have McAtee raring to get started at the City Ground.
14) Jarell Quansah (Liverpool to Bayer Leverkusen, £30m to £35m, July 2025)
A winner of the U19 and U21 Euros, having captained England at various levels and been on Gareth Southgate’s standby list for Euro 2024, is destined to make the senior grade at some point.
Quansah was even in Thomas Tuchel’s first England squad and Liverpool will be among those keen to monitor how he fares in Germany.
13) Tino Livramento (Southampton to Newcastle, £32m, August 2023)
Signed by Saints from Chelsea for just £5m in 2021, right-back Livramento earned Southampton a massive profit after just 34 appearances, his spell cruelly curtailed by injury.
That likely contributed to his slow start at Newcastle, eventually turning out 35 times in his debut season and helping gradually wean Eddie Howe off his Kieran Trippier fix.
12) Ollie Watkins (Brentford to Aston Villa, £28m to £33m, September 2020)
One season as a centre-forward was enough to tempt Aston Villa into parting with up to £33m for Watkins in September 2020. Those £5m in add-ons have surely been achieved across 87 goals, 18 England caps and Champions League qualification.
11) Lewis Hall (Chelsea to Newcastle, £28m to £35m, July 2024)
With only 12 career appearances to his name by the time he joined Newcastle on loan, Hall was rather unsurprisingly not in the England picture.
A first season with the Magpies in which he made his move permanent but still struggled for game time for the most part did little to improve those prospects.
But the 20-year-old has his feet firmly under the St James’ Park table now as a fully-fledged England international.
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10) Elliot Anderson (Newcastle to Nottingham Forest, £35m, July 2024)
It instinctively felt like an absurd fee but a few factors explained that final number beyond PSR-based cynicism.
Anderson, a young and highly-rated player in a position Forest were openly desperate to reinforce, was on a long-term contract with a Premier League rival. And ultimately the back-scratching transfer of Odysseas Vlachodimos between the two clubs effectively offset about £20m of the valuation of a player on the England periphery.
9) Tyler Dibling (Southampton to Everton, £35m to £42m, August 2025)
Southampton had been issuing quotes of £100m for their prize asset earlier in the year but once the realities of relegation and their role as a selling club aligned, Everton were able to move for well under that fee.
The Toffees will make their money back by buying children’s socks for his and Jack Grealish’s kits.
8) Omari Hutchinson (Ipswich Town to Nottingham Forest, £37.5m, August 2025)
A year after joining Ipswich Town for a doomed year in the Premier League, the Tractor Boys almost doubled their money when Nottingham Forest came calling with a big pile of Anthony Elanga money. He has played for Jamaica but has since switched allegiances back to England, winning the Under-21 Euros in 2024.
7) Morgan Gibbs-White (Wolves to Nottingham Forest, £25m to £44.5m, August 2022)
It feels as though a fair amount of those add-ons might well have been triggered by any of 18 goals, 29 assists, the avoidance of relegation, European qualification, England recognition or the biggest contract in the club’s history.
6) Jacob Ramsey (Aston Villa to Newcastle United, £39m to £43m, August 2025)
It is a lot of money for a player who started just half of Aston Villa’s Premier League games the season before, but then you remember that West Ham paid £40m for…
5) Max Kilman (Wolves to West Ham, £40m, July 2024)
An England international of 25 caps, but in futsal rather than association football. That actually prevented Kilman from making a proposed switch in allegiance to represent Ukraine from Euro 2021 onwards, leaving the Three Lions as his only route to playing for a country.
His consistency for Wolves put him on the fringes of an England call-up and a £40m move to West Ham should theoretically have been the final push. But he doesn’t feel particularly close to breaking through under Thomas Tuchel.
4) Anthony Gordon (Everton to Newcastle, £40m, January 2023)
It was assumed by many that Newcastle had taken leave of their entire senses when throwing as much as £45m at Everton for a forward with seven goals and eight assists in 78 games.
Gordon already outstripped both before hitting that appearance mark at Newcastle, until Liverpool speculation left his ‘head in a mess’.
This past season was a little slower for the Gordon bandwagon but someone had to make way for Jacob Murphy’s Ballon d’Or push.
3) Cole Palmer (Manchester City to Chelsea, £40m to £42.5m, September 2023)
It is easy to forget just how ludicrous this move was at the time.
It made absolutely no sense: Chelsea did not need yet another young, exciting forward and if Palmer was of the requisite quality, Manchester City would never have let him go.
But Chelsea have thrown more than enough at the wall for some to stick and Palmer was the shoot of inspiration rather than yet another questionable deal. By the end of the year he had become their most important player and that responsibility only increased to the tune of an England debut, goal and place in their European Championship squad, as well as a goal in the final.
Palmer had played just 41 games at senior level when Chelsea signed him for the rough equivalent of around £1m per career appearance. It has gone well.
2) Aaron Wan-Bissaka (Crystal Palace to Manchester United, £45m to £50m, July 2019)
Crystal Palace supporters probably felt that it was the usual show of big club bias from Southgate to not cap Wan-Bissaka, then call him up two months after he joined Manchester United. But the emergence of Eberechi Eze, Marc Guehi and Adam Wharton proved Palace to be the former manager’s favourite club, and Wan-Bissaka remains as uncapped at Old Trafford as he ever was at Selhurst Park.
He will have known that the England door closed long before he officially switched allegiance to DR Congo in May 2025. Wan-Bissaka is still yet to represent them after withdrawing from the June internationals due to ‘personal medical reasons’.
1) Jamie Gittens (Borussia Dortmund to Chelsea, £48.5m to £52m, July 2025)
It was painfully obvious as far back as October 2024, when two Gittens goals in a Champions League defeat to Real Madrid prompted this line:
‘Chelsea will almost certainly not be able to help themselves when it comes to a 20-year-old English forward with experience in the Manchester City academy set-up.’
And so it came to pass that the Blues added to their burgeoning attacking ranks by spending some of their Club World Cup windfall on Gittens’ capture.
All it took was “a couple of text messages” from Palmer and Delap “telling me to come” and join their legion of uncapped English talents.
