Raheem Sterling’s £49m move to Manchester City in numbers

It is another huge transfer fee, highlighting the inflation taking place in the English game as a result of the new £5.13 billion TV deal which comes into effect at the start of the coming season.

But what are the details of the summer’s biggest transfer so far? And just how big is it historically?

That’s the total outlay Manchester City are reported to have made in the papers today. That’s £44m up front, another £5m to follow, and then wages of £10.4m per year over five years or so.

Manchester City succeeded with their third bid for Sterling. The first was £35m, the second £40m and the third and final offer was £49m.

That meant their approach was £1m short of the asking price of £50m, but Liverpool accepted it anyway to bring an end to a bitter transfer wrangle.

That was all Liverpool paid to recruit Sterling from QPR as a teenager five years ago. So the total profit is a healthy…

However, Liverpool won’t be getting every penny of that.

QPR will reportedly receive in the region of this amount having included a 20% sell-on clause when Sterling moved to Anfield in 2010. A canny move.

The £49m price tag makes Sterling the most expensive English player in history - and by some distance.

Sterling will also become the third most expensive player transferred either from or to a Premier League club.

Compiling a list of the biggest ever transfers is a risky business. The debate over what Neymar really cost is one such issue, while Zlatan Ibrahimovic was part of a swap deal which makes things tricky. Moreover, the complication of different currencies also comes into play, but here is a best estimate, with numbers from the Daily Mail.

Sterling comes in at 11.

That is Sterling’s current wage at Liverpool.

And this is what he can expect to be earning at Manchester City.

Not a bad pay rise by anyone’s standards.

That’s Sterling’s new annual wage.

That’s how many canisters of nitrous oxide (30p) you could buy per year with that income, should you feel so inclined.

Or you could get enough balloons (4p) to supply every birthday party in England for, well, quite a while.