The value contrast between Brentford and United

Academic analysis has shown that wage spending is highly correlated with a club’s finishing position over time (with a statistical R² (variance explained) of 90%), as first seen in the seminal “Soccernomics” by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szyminski. Even in a single season (2021/21), we can observe a fairly linear relationship between wages and league position, especially in the bottom half of the table.

Clubs like West Ham, Brighton and Brentford have performed compared to their wage bill. In contras is the extent of Manchester United’s under-performance, as they only finished sixth in the league, despite enjoying the highest wages in England’s top flight.

Manchester United’s £384m wage bill was not only the highest in the 2021/22 Premier League, but actually the highest ever reported in England. Three other clubs paid more than £300m in wages, namely Liverpool £366m, Manchester City £354m and Chelsea £340m.

There was then a big gap of more than £100m to the two North London clubs, Arsenal £212m and Tottenham £209m, so in terms of wages people should really talk about a Big Four, as opposed to a Big Six.

Three clubs had a wage bill below £100m, including two that were relegated (Burnley £92m and Watford £79m). However, lowest of all were Brentford, who got more bang for their buck than any other Premier Club, as they finished in a very impressive 13th place despite wages of just £68m.

The Premier League

By and large, Premier League clubs enjoy wage bills a fair bit higher than their counterparts in the other European leagues, though the two highest clubs overall are actually from France (PSG) and Spain (Real Madrid).

The strength of the Premier League is evident when looking at wage bills, where each English club is paid £180m on average. This was a substantial £83m more than La Liga £97m, while being over twice as much as all the other leagues: the Bundesliga £89m, Serie A £84m and Ligue 1 £75m.

Looking at the figures in England’s second tier, we can see that the top three clubs also reported pretty high wages: Fulham £90m, Bournemouth £61m and Nottingham Forest £59m. This would have placed all of them in the list of Europe’s top 60 clubs with Fulham taking an impressive 38th position. In fact, seven Championship clubs would have been in Europe’s top 80, boosted by a combination of Premier League parachute payments and substantial promotion bonuses.

The leading English clubs generally have pretty good wages to turnover ratios, e.g. four of them are 62% or below, while Bayern Munich also have consistently low figures (53% in 2021/22).

Wage bills are by no means the only driver of performance for clubs, as other factors clearly also play a part, such as good coaching, tactics, team spirit or plain good luck, but it is clearly very important.

In other words, money on its own cannot buy success, but it sure does go a long way in the world of football. The growing financial domination of the Premier League has allowed it to spend much more on wages than other major leagues, thereby recruiting the best players and coaches, which helps explain its recent success in European competitions.

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The Political Economy of Football V2

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