Imagine you are in a recruitment meeting ahead of the summer transfer window.Your club needs a striker. In front of you is the board of targets. There is a name at the top — and the list rolls on through possible alternatives.This is the reality for teams planning their summer transfer business. Yes, every club has an ideal top target. But the market is not that simple. They might be unavailable. Other clubs might come in for them. Before you know it, the board changes and the targets shift.The Athletic posed a simple question — could we, through the knowledge of experts from across European football, replicate the boards of goalkeepers, central defenders, full-backs, midfielders, attacking midfielders, wide forwards and forwards that will be under consideration at different clubs?Welcome to our attempt — The Athletic’s Transfer Tiers.Ahead of the summer, The Athletic built a long list of players who were likely to move or attract significant interest in the upcoming transfer window. We sorted them into seven positional categories, each roughly 20 players deep, before sending the completed pool of players to people who work within the football industry.In total, nearly 40 experts responded to The Athletic’s questions. These included sporting and technical directors, coaches, scouts, intermediaries, analysts and, in a few instances, people with important local knowledge.What we asked them to do was relatively simple. From the players available, in each position, select and rank three players they expect to be targeted by elite clubs (a Champions League contender), three more who they think will be prioritised by clubs from the level just below, and a further three who will be pursued by teams broadly defined as being part of the game’s wealthy middle-class.Tier One is targeted at Champions League contenders (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)The lines between those categories are blurred and hard to properly define. But to provide as much clarity as possible, Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain would be considered Tier One; Aston Villa, Inter Milan and Borussia Dortmund belong in Tier Two, even if there are financial differences between them; and Brighton, Bayer Leverkusen — process-led clubs, essentially — would belong in Tier Three.