Southampton are getting more bang for their buck than anyone else in the Premier League when it comes to wages.
Saints are only ranked 16th in the top flight in terms of their wage bill – £55.2million – and yet are currently seventh in the Premier League.
Chelsea are also getting value for money – they’re 10 points clear at the top of the table but are only the third-highest payers with a wage bill of £192.7million behind Manchester United (£215.8million) and Manchester City (£205million). Bottom-club Burnley’s wage bill is just £21.5million including £6million in promotion bonuses, one-tenth the size of United’s.
The biggest under-achievers are QPR, with a £75.3million wage bill even from a season when they were in the Championship making them the eighth-highest payers – yet they are down at 19th in the Premier League table. QPR’s salary bill was almost twice what the club earned in total last season.
Wage costs, along with profits and losses, of all top-flight clubs for 2013/14 have been confirmed via annual accounts posted at Companies House. Overall they show that you get what you pay for when it comes to players, with the current top four in the Premier League having the biggest wage bills.
The combined accounts of the 20 clubs show overall turnover rose to £3.07billion from £2.3billion in 2012/13 with wages increasing too but at a slower rate and totalling £1.84billion, compared with £1.65billion last time. The latest figure shows salaries account for 59.9% of turnover compared with 71.7% for the same 20 clubs a year before.
The increase in income is mainly down to the Premier League’s lucrative television deal that came into effect for the first time last season. The cash injection has led to six clubs who were in the red in 2012/13 now being in the black.
Apart from those clubs who were promoted from the Championship last season, only Manchester City, Aston Villa and Sunderland ended the 2013/14 season having made a financial loss.
Premier League director of communications Dan Johnson said the clubs’ decision two years ago to introduce spending controls had also helped.
Johnson said: “There are two reasons for this. The first is increasing revenues and the second is the financial criteria the clubs have voted in two seasons ago which put financial sustainability at the heart of how they want to go forward.”
Source: SNAPPA
