The way this is accounted for in the profit and loss statements (which this maps out) smoothes our those year to year fluctuations. Acquiring contracts / transfers are treated as asset acquisitions and so the full cost is not booked to the P&L but to the balance sheet as an asset. Then that cost is booked as expense in the P&L statements over the life of the contract. So if you buy a 5 year contract for 100m, then you don’t book 100m immediately as expense but you amortize 20m per year over 5 years. That is the bulk of that depreciation and amortization line in this mapping of expenses. They buy players year over year consistently so it isn’t a one-time event but a recurring cost of operating a top tier football club.

They have it in their financial statements. They have 115m of player acquisitions netted against 30m of player sales this year for a net outflow of 85m in FY22. 138m netted against 46m for a new outflow of 113m in FY21. They do this every year, it’s effectively an operating expense which is what that amort line is meant to represent. But people with amateur understanding of accounting think that amort is a tax aberration - it isn’t, it represents the expensing methodology for real material cash outflows the business has very recently spent cash on.

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And most payments for player transfers are spread out over many years.