European Wages 2021/22

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Given the importance of wage bills to the likely success of football clubs, I thought that it would be interesting to look at wages for the Big Five European leagues, first by individual club and then the leagues themselves.

Correlation of wages with success

Academic analysis has shown that wage spending is highly correlated with a club’s finishing position over time (with a statistical R² 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. The graph highlights how well clubs like West Ham, Brighton and Brentford have performed compared to their wage bill.

In contrast, it also clearly shows 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.

Approach

We have used wages from club accounts for the 2021/22 season, as these are the most recent available. These wages figures cover all staff, not just players, and include performance-related bonuses plus social security and pension payments.

Figures from the Euro denominated leagues have been converted to GBP using exchange rates from the Deloitte Money League, e.g. 1.18 for 2021/22.

Premier League

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.