Talented young Brazilian wingers rarely come cheap, but the £85million ($116m) package Tottenham Hotspur agreed with Manchester City to sign Savio (formerly known as Savinho) feels overinflated.The 22-year-old dazzled in his first few appearances after joining City from French side Troyes in 2024 (having impressed on loan at Girona in 2023-24), but then faded fast, recording just two goals across 53 league appearances for the club.It was obvious to anyone watching Spurs’ 3-0 opening-day demolition away to Brentford that they were in dire need of attacking reinforcements, but given Savio’s meagre output, has that desperation allowed the market to take advantage?Even as recently as yesterday evening, eyebrows were raised when Nottingham Forest agreed a club record transfer to bring Liam Delap (Premier League goals last season: one) from Stamford Bridge to Chelsea.Whether Spurs have overpaid for Savio is a tricky question to answer, given there is no clear consensus on exactly how footballers should be valued. It is an intractable equation combining factors such as a player’s age, current contract length, past performance, potential (which Spurs are clearly placing greater weight on) and marketability.Not that the complexity has put people off trying to solve the unsolvable. German website Transfermarkt is the best-known resource for wide-scale estimates of players’ “market values”. Using these estimates, The Athletic compared the market value of every Premier League transfer since 2012 with the fee paid, to get a broad-brush sense of which deals represented the biggest overpayments.Note that, for scalability, we used the fees listed by Transfermarkt rather than those reported by The Athletic. Transfermarkt lists Savio’s purchase price as £75.4million, similar to the initial £75million upfront fee reported by The Athletic, but short of the potential overall £85million package.