It was shortly before 5pm on Tuesday when Enzo Fernandez was cleared to undertake his medical with Manchester City. A cynic might suggest he wasn’t the only component in the £125million deal who required extensive testing.The coming months will support or challenge the wisdom of such investment in a midfielder whose shortcomings were as apparent as his gifts at Chelsea.But if there is to be any benefit of the doubt given to City, it comes from knowing they were not alone in their extravagance. This transfer window, the craziest there has ever been, was the living embodiment of that line from Succession, when Logan Roy offers a view on the negotiating prowess of his kids: ‘Congratulations on saying the biggest number, you f****** morons.’Despite the restrictions of cost control rules, and the griping they incur, an astonishing, unprecedented £3.46billion was spent by Premier League clubs between June 15 and 11pm on Tuesday night.That was a new high and will now stand alongside a few others set in the past 11 weeks – 11 clubs broke transfer records on individual transactions, £350million was ploughed into teenage recruits and five deals crossed the £100million mark. Of them, which of Fernandez, Morgan Rogers, Elliot Anderson, Bradley Barcola and Sandro Tonali would objectively be considered world class? A further 17 purchases exceeded £50million. As a showcase of Premier League excesses, it has been jolting, with one clear trend developing at speed – the division is becoming a closed shop, with the rest of Europe’s big leagues unable to do business at British prices. Manchester City’s signing of Enzo Fernandez took spending to an unprecedented £3.46billion by Premier League clubs between June 15 and 11pm on Tuesday night Bradley Barcola moved to Liverpool from PSG for £123m. He was one of five £100m+ deals done by Premier League clubs during this windowWhether such isolation is a good thing is open to debate. Ditto the financial compliance issues that might lurk around the bend from a bonkers moment in time. But the increased volume of transfers that featured only Premier League clubs is a significant change – those deals counted for 35 per cent of transactions, up from 30 per cent last year, and crucially the most expensive among them.Premier League experience comes at a premium, of course, and the squad quota for homegrown players is also a factor. But those considerations have existed for years. The variable to study here is the ever-growing gulf between England and their overseas rivals – the combined spend this summer from La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1 was less than that £3.46billion.As such, they have become prey for the British clubs, but with a slight twist – the identity of the predators has shifted and altered the wider food chain with it.Noted football finance expert Kieran Maguire tells Daily Mail Sport: ‘What we now have is a middle-tier of English clubs who can outbid anyone in Europe that isn’t in the Champions League. If you read the last Deloitte Football Money League, you will see 14 of the 30 richest football clubs in the world came from the Premier League. Look at Bournemouth, Brighton, Brentford and, to some extent, Crystal Palace, and the role they are playing in it all.‘They have been very successful in shopping on the continent and once those players have shown they can transition from foreign leagues, they then move on to the Big Six for the big fees. We have seen that in several windows now. ‘Watford got Joao Pedro from Brazil, Brighton got him from Watford, and Chelsea got him from Brighton. Brighton got Carlos Baleba from France and Manchester United came in and paid more than double the price to get him from Brighton.‘That middle-tier is playing a key role in increasing the transfers between Premier League clubs, with the biggest able to step in later when a player is tried and tested. A club like Brighton, Brentford or Bournemouth are almost doing the scouting for other clubs, but we should also say they do very, very well out of it.’ There is nothing new in the depiction of the Premier League as an ecosystem where Manchester City feed off Chelsea who feed off, say, Aston Villa or Brighton. But the growing role of Maguire’s ‘middle-tier’ is subtly fascinating – that cohort of clubs is often responsible for the most impressive and challenging work; operations that favour intelligence-gathering and originality in the digital application of old-school scouting on the continent. They are assuming the risk for those who swoop in later, but they are doing it with greater resources and reaping astonishing rewards. Brighton got Carlos Baleba from France and Manchester United came in and paid more than double the price to get him from Brighton Brentford’s Mamadou Sangare from Lens is the one most hyped privately in Premier League circles as having the potential to appreciate substantially in priceBrighton are probably best-in-class for this kind of work and Brentford are not far off – their £41m signing of the deep-lying midfielder Mamadou Sangare from Lens is the one most hyped privately in Premier League circles as having the potential to appreciate substantially. Liverpool have a need in that same area of the pitch, but spent triple the fee to land the talented winger Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain.Time will tell on which acquisition was smarter for the different needs of different clubs. Likewise, if Sangare is the next cab off the rank in the summer window of 2027.Meanwhile, the Premier League wagon rolls along on uneven wheels. Manchester United spent almost £150million on three midfielders and didn’t find a replacement or back-up for Luke Shaw at left back; Arsenal were led down a garden path by Julian Alvarez and still lack a world-class striker; Tottenham shopped exclusively in the Premier League at great cost for wounded birds.As for Manchester City, they put an inordinate amount of faith in Enzo Maresca’s faith in Fernandez, while Aston Villa have changed half their starting XI. Chelsea, somehow, have emerged as unlikely winners of a transfer window.The latter might ring as the craziest development of all from a window that valued Fernandez at £101million more than City paid for Yaya Toure in 2010. Inflation has a lot to answer for, but how much longer before the balloon bursts?