Fulham’s return to the Premier League has been backed by the spending power of Shahid Khan and the Cottager’s deadline day spending took their total outlay in the window over the £100M threshold, a record-breaking effort.
Having already made a bold statement by bringing in the highly-rated Ivorian midfielder Jean Michaël Seri - once a target for Barcelona - and the World Cup winner Andre Schurrle on a loan deal from Borussia Dortmund, they kept Jim White busy on the final day of the newly-restricted English transfer window.
Sevilla goalkeeper Sergio Rico, another loan signing, along with a lend of Timothy Fosu-Mensah from Manchester United and the Argentine striker Luciano Vietto from Atletico Madrid were forced through just in time to get the requisite paperwork done.
Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa, a £22.3M buy from Marseille, came in alongside the left-back Joe Bryan from Bristol City in a £6M deal and drove their spending past the levels of any newly-promoted team in the history of the league.
That took the total number of players added to Slaviša Jokanović’s squad to a total of twelve as a remarkable campaign of squad-strengthening, potted out by Khan’s son Tony, has been undertaken by last season’s Championship play-off winners.
In doing so the Craven Cottage hierarchy have, in effect, taken an unprecedented nine-figure punt on the club maintaining their top-flight status.
Fellow Premier League newcomers Wolves made a significant splash themselves, bringing in 13 players at a reported cost of £66M, as both try to take a running jump at the moneyed upper tier of the emglish football pyramid.
