Fernando Torres 2007, after signing for a club record transfer fee. He marked his first season at Anfield by being Liverpool's first player since Robbie Fowler in the 1995–96 season to score more than 20 league goals in a season. The most prolific goalscoring spell of his career, he became the fastest player in Liverpool history to score 50 league goals. He was named in the FIFA World XI in 2008 and 2009. Torres left the club in January 2011 to join Chelsea for a British record transfer fee of £50 million, which made him the most expensive Spanish player in history.
Transfer (association football) by an English club came in the summer of 1988, when Tottenham Hotspur signed Paul Gascoigne from Newcastle United. Within weeks of Gascoigne's transfer, the national record was broken again when Tony Cottee moved from West Ham United to Everton for £2.2 million, and again shortly afterwards when Ian Rush returned to Liverpool from Juventus for £2.8 million. In the space of two months in the summer of 1992, three transfers broke the record, all by Italian clubs: Jean-Pierre Papin transferred from Marseille to Milan, becoming the world's first ever £10 million player. Almost immediately, rivals Juventus topped that with