For the first time in history, the January spending from the top five leagues reached €1bn while Arsenal have now made a profit when the last two windows are combined.

The January transfer window used to be seen as the summer window’s slightly pointless little brother, but not this year! Oh no.

2018 was the biggest January in terms of the top five league’s expenditure, which amounted to over €1bn for the first time ever.

According to the Football Observatory, that’s a 36% increase on last year.

The Premier League reportedly accounted for a whopping 51% of that spending, which is mind-boggling when you consider it’s up against four other big leagues.

Their net balance from January is -€113m or -£128.4m.

How much of that did Arsenal contribute to?

Well, despite making our club record signing of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£56m), they didn’t actually spend much.

In fact, the Gunners only forked out around £2m on Konstantinos Mavropanos and got Henrikh Mkhitaryan from Manchester United as part of a swap deal for Alexis Sanchez.

Overall, according to Nick Harris from Sporting Intelligence, the Gunners had a net spend in January of £9.4m.

Over the course of the season’s two windows, Arsenal are in profit to the tune of £7.6m.

La Liga recorded their biggest deficit ever – -€188m – mostly due to the mega-signing of Philippe Coutinho from Liverpool (€161m/£142m).

Meanwhile, Serie A made €48m, the Bundesliga made €33m and Ligue 1 were in the positive by €14m.