Brighton & Hove Albion - €55.73m
Milan - €48.67m
Inter - €38.90m
Stretching things out over multiple seasons and netting the expenses off makes things look a bit better, but only obscures the fact that they did spend big, they're just operating in a big-spending league. It's no small feat to compete in that league, but to say they have "conquered" the transfer market after half a season having splashed out what they did is declaring victory a bit prematurely.
It's a little bit harder to compare by looking at Brighton's wage bill in GBP but Milan's in EUR. After conversion to EUR we get:
Milan - €169m
Brighton - €123m
So a team currently who have never finished higher than ninth in the Premier League have a wage bill that is 72% that of the reigning Serie A champions (not to mention seven-time European Cup winner who have won their domestic league nineteen times). They may not (yet? these figures are from 2021) have a higher wage bill than a current giant of the European game, but they're certainly within the same ballpark.