The transfer window has been shut for a little while now, and we have had time to digest the many comings and goings in the Premier League. A record £3.5bn was spent by clubs in the top tier of English football, with four players being bought for £100m or more. A further five deals were done for at least £70m, but not all of the transfers completed during the summer window look particularly good value for money.
Anyone can see that the market was crazy, with a perfect storm of contributing factors meaning that obtaining players at a sensible price was extremely difficult. Several transfers stick out as being particularly bad value, but maybe those players will prove us wrong.
In contrast, there are far fewer deals that are in contention for being classed as bargains. Chelsea’s acquisition of Emi Martinez for around £7.5m looks like something of a masterstroke. Signings don’t need to be cheap to be good value, though, and perhaps Morgan Rogers will turn out to be a steal, even at £117m, if the Blues win the league.
That said, one of the cheaper signings of the summer 2026/27 transfer window may well prove to be the biggest bargain. Everton signed Hayden Hackney from Middlesbrough for a fee believed to be £16.5m. In the modern game, where Nottingham Forest paid £50m for a striker that netted two goals in 41 games last term, and Cristiano Ronaldo gets paid around £3.5m per week, it seems the Toffees have got themselves a bargain.
Who Is the Championship Player of the Year?
Hayden Hackney is the PFA Championship Players’ Player of the Year in association with Mappin and Webb 🏆
Voted for by the players. pic.twitter.com/WbE9rRKEaw
— PFA (@PFA) August 25, 2026
On the 25th of August, Hackney was named the Championship PFA Players’ Player of the Year for 2026. The Redcar native who had been with Boro since 2011 was born in 2002 and turned 24 in June. He made two appearances for the first team in 2020/21 and just one in the EFL Cup the following season when he was loaned out to Scunthorpe (where he played 28 times in League 2).
However, in 2022/23 he really established himself at his hometown club and since then has got better and better. He was injured towards the end of the 2025/26 campaign but had already done enough to be crowned Player of the Year, netting six times from 41 matches in all competitions (with five in 38 in the Championship).
Boro finished fifth, with Hackney’s injury a factor in their inability to earn automatic promotion. A calf injury kept him out of his side’s final eight games of the regular season, with Boro winning just two of those matches, one against a Sheffield Wednesday side who finished the season on zero points! Had he stayed fit, the midfielder’s former side may well have finished second and be in the Premier League right now.
Despite his late injury, Hackney was a standout performer, both for his childhood team and across the division. In addition to the PFA award, his performances also earned him the EFL Championship Player of the Season prize.
Hackney is an all-round midfielder but generally plays in a deep-lying role. That limits his chances to help his side going forward, but even so he delivered six goals and eight assists in 2025/26. He has the ability to beat a man, play a killer pass and also break up play, as well as boasting a good engine and the fitness to cover a lot of ground.
International Career
He has impressed at the start of the 2026/27 season, with Evertonians instantly taking to the modest and likeable footballer. It is early days, but a good campaign with the Toffees could certainly bring him to the attention of Thomas Tuchel.
Hackney was part of the England under-21 team that won the Euros in 2025, and he has played for his country 13 times at the level, as well as twice at under-15 level. As well as twice for Scotland’s under-21s! But the less said about that, the better, as he now seems firmly committed to the Three Lions, despite his mother being born north of the border.
In England terms, Hackney faces stiff competition from the likes of Declan Rice and Elliott Anderson, not to mention new teammate James Garner and others. However, his manager has proved adept over the years at taking Championship players into the England squad, so he is in good hands.
History Suggests Hackney Has Huge Career Ahead of Him
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David Moyes will do everything he can to get the best out of his bargain summer recruit, and the Scot has a fine record when it comes to signing players from the second tier. In his first spell with Everton, Leighton Baines, Phil Jagielka, Tim Cahill, and Joleon Lescott were all signed from the Championship or with very little PL experience and went on to play for England (and in Cahill’s case Australia). With West Ham, he did a similar job with Jarrod Bowen.
Another indication of what might lie ahead for Hackney comes from looking back at the former winners of the EFL Championship Player of the Year award. Jagielka was actually the first footballer to land the prize, doing so in 2006. Kevin Phillips won in 2008, while Rickie Lambert, Danny Ings, Patrick Bamford and Ollie Watkins were other winners who went on to play for England.
In addition, others, such as Teemu Pukki and Aleksander Mitrovic to name just two, went on to have long and distinguished international careers – that duo have 239 international caps between them! £16.5m may well make Hackney the bargain deal of a very overpriced window.