Money continues to fly around the transfer market like there's no tomorrow but some of the best deals are done for relatively cheap prices

Every summer, football fans around the world beg for their clubs to splash the cash in the transfer market. When the window closes in September, the rumour mill starts up again. There is never an end to the cycle of movement.

Transfer news alone has become a 24/7 news cycle (you can read our live blog here, by the way), yet it is often the moves on the lesser end of the sensationalist scale which often wind up being most successful.

There's always a bargain to be had as long as you're looking in the right places, and as it turns out, the contending clubs across the world can actually sign talented players at a snip if they focus their attentions enough.

GOAL has dug back through the relatively recent archives to pick out the 25 best-value deals since the turn of the millennium.

Follow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱Getty Images Sport25Seamus Coleman (Everton, £60,000)

For the sake of fairness (and ease), we will not be including free transfers in this list. At a snip £60,000, Seamus Coleman's move from Sligo Rovers to Everton is as close to zero as we're going to get.

The right-back will also be the least glamorous name making the least glamorous switch here. No offence, Seamus, that's just how it is. But the Irishman does crack our top 25 because that is a ludicrously small price to pay for one of the Premier League's better defenders and leaders for over a decade.

When all is said and done, Coleman will go down as probably the last true great of Goodison Park. He is everything to be admired about modern Everton.

AdvertisementAFP24Mikel Arteta (Arsenal, £10m)

From an Everton incoming to a painful outgoing, Mikel Arteta's exit from Merseyside led to some rather unique protests and backlash. If you had Twitter back in 2011 and were in Toffees circles, you'll remember the age-old question of 'where's the Arteta money?'.

Arsenal forked out £10m to bring in the Spaniard, who was on the verge of turning 30 and brought some much-needed experience to a youthful midfield. Arteta would win a couple of FA Cups and inherit the captaincy, which may have been enough for him to sneak onto this list alone, but it's his lasting legacy which clinched it for us.

Without this transfer, Arsenal would probably never have made the gamble to appoint Arteta as manager in 2019. The revolution he's overseen may not have happened under just any old coach, and this particular butterfly effect is still being felt today. Isn't it funny how life works, eh?

Getty Images23Christian Eriksen (Tottenham Hotspur, £11.5m)

There were a few suggestions from Tottenham Hotspur backlogs which came into thinking for this 25. Luka Modric being plucked from Dinamo Zagreb out of obscurity prior to his Euro 2008 exploits was a superb piece of scouting, but he came at a then club-record £16.5m. Months earlier, Gareth Bale arrived from Southampton, but as a £10m left-back who'd played one season of senior football in the Championship.

The spirit of what this list is about and stands for therefore leads down the path of Christian Eriksen, who Spurs were somehow able to steal from Ajax for only £11.5m in 2013 when it was widely known he was a sure-thing to become one of the world's leading playmakers.

In a stacked Tottenham side which featured Harry Kane, Dele Alli and Son Heung-min, Eriksen was often the player who raised everyone's games and knitted everything together.

AFP22Julio Cesar (Inter, £2m)

As a broad concept, the transfer market can be unforgiving, if at times downright stupid. The market for goalkeepers is an even greater exaggeration of that.

Realistically, you only need one outstanding candidate on your books, while the wild trajectory of goalies compared to other positions means it should be easier to find a favourable deal. And yet clubs seemingly find a way to make that look difficult.

Inter's £2m purchase of Julio Cesar from Flamengo – via Chievo Verona to work around Serie A's cap on non-EU players – goes down as one of the great goalkeeper transfers. At San Siro, he quickly established himself as a leading shot-stopper and helped the Nerazzurri to several trophies.