Manchester United are paying a hefty price for their performance this season, spending an average of £3.2m per point in the premier league. This makes them the absolute bottom in terms of wages to points. Jose Mourinho’s team was paid the second-highest wage bill of £221m, turning it into just 69 points.
Manchester United were a little below Manchester City in the rankings, with City paying around £2.9m per point, followed by Sunderland. Sunderland – who have now been relegated out of the Premier League – were spending around £2.8m per point.
The figures were put together by the academics at the Centre for Sports Business in the University of Salford. They came to the conclusion that the wage bill of a team remains one of the best indicators of where the team will finish in the league. The high spenders typically end up ranked high in the league overall.
When the academics looked at the average wages per points however, the figures told a different story. The best performers in this particular table were Bournemouth and Hull; who spent around £700,000 in wages per point in their league tables. Manchester United came in dead last.
The overall biggest spenders in football were Manchester City; who pulled in a £225m wage bill; £4m more than that of Manchester United. The Premier League champions Chelsea came in third with £218m. A surprising result came from Spurs; who finished second in the league and spent £121m on their player wages; around £100m less than the clubs surrounding them.
Other big spenders in the top of half of the league were Arsenal with £200m, and Liverpool with £166m. After Liverpool came a big drop down to the other tier of clubs, which was headed up by the £83m of Everton.
Chris Brady – the director of the Centre for Sports Business at the university said that there can be small margins that affect the final positions teams in the English Premier League get, the League itself can generally be broken down into three “mini-leagues” by their wage-bill; the top six spenders, middle seven spenders, and bottom seven spenders.
The only two clubs in the study that appeared to finish outside of their own little mini-leagues were Bournemouth and Sunderland, for different reasons. Sunderland were able to finish 10 places below where their wage bill would put them, while Bournemouth were able to finish 8 places above their predicted final position.
The Salford University team were able to use the data to assess managers and head coaches by looking at the teams that finished above and below their expected positions. According to the data Eddie Howe of Bournemouth, Claude Puel of Southamptom, Maruicio Pochettino of Tottenham, and Sean Dyche of Burnley were the top four managers.
David Moyes of Sunderland would easily be considered the worst manager, taking his team to 10 places below where their wage bill would put them. Walter Mazzari of Watford was another poor performer, as were Mark Hughes of Stoke and the aforementioned Jose Mourinho of Manchester United.
All of this might sound like a lot of fancy mathematics, but there are some sports betting implications to consider. The data isn’t perfect by any means – thanks to the magic of human error – but there is evidence to suggest that the more a team spends on their players, the better the team will do. The next time you cash in a Ladbrokes code and place a bet on a footie match, why not bet on the team that pays their players the most?