I Ran the Numbers.
Here’s What I Found.

After publishing the Transfer Laffer Curve theory, a question came up in the comments from u/StaticandCo about whether the curve values were arbitrary. They were. I already had data pulled from my wayback snapshots — gameweek records for 500 managers across GW1–29 of the 2025/26 season. 200 from the top of the overall rankings, 300 from mid-table. Total: 14,500 observations.

For each manager, for each gameweek, I reconstructed how many free transfers they were holding and measured three things: points scored vs the field average, whether their rank improved that week, and their actual rank movement.

Here is the data.

Points vs field average is broadly flat across all five states. No dramatic peak or crash. Managers holding 4–5 transfers score slightly more — but they likely have stronger squads that didn’t need fixing. We cannot separate squad quality from transfer strategy with this data.

The sample mixes elite and average managers — not representative of the 11 million playing the game. The buckets are wildly unequal — 8,359 observations at 1 FT versus 145 at 5 FTs. The free transfer count is reconstructed from transfer history, not directly observed — edge cases will contain errors. We cannot control for squad quality. Managers with good squads may accumulate transfers precisely because their squad doesn’t need fixing.

Check our working. Download and tell us what we missed.