GOBSMACKED fans have been forced to pick their jaws up from the floor after learning what the Premier League’s wage bill could have been spent on.
With the new season in full-swing, Spotrac have revealed the staggering table of stats showing just how much Prem clubs spend on their players’ salaries.
Manchester City are splashing £165.72m on wage bills this season, with Erling Haaland top earner Credit: Getty
Arsenal lead the wage bill rankings, £9.52m ahead of rivals City Credit: Getty
Current champs Arsenal sit at the very top of the pile, despite not having any of the top three highest paid players.
Instead, the league’s highest-paid star Erling Haaland sees Manchester City come in £9.52million behind the Gunners.
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And second-highest earner Virgil Van Dijk watches his Liverpool squad reel off a £165.1m bill in third.
But the mind-boggling stats can easily get lost in the world of flashy football and fans forget how far that kind of money can go in the ‘real’ world.
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The average price of a UK home is £273,000 as of July 2026.
This means that if they scrapped the league and went all in on residential homes, they could buy 5,978 houses.
And if they went down the route of healthcare.
NHS nurses earn between £37,000 to £42,000 annually, so the Premier League could afford anywhere between 38,857 to 44,108 new nurses.
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Meanwhile, 36 new schools could crop up from Newcastle to Newquay, if the league budgeted the average £45m for each one.
But that would mean the 542 stars who play in the top-flight would not be getting their wages for 12 months.
The top six clubs in the table pull together a huge £896.92m, while the remaining 14 teams have a combined total of £732.49m.
That means that Arsenal, City, Liverpool, Manchester United, Tottenham, and Chelsea account for about 54.9 per cent of the entire league payroll.
The average for the Big Six is £149.5m compared to a humble £52.5m per club for the rest – roughly 2.85 times more per club.
And looking at the other end of the table, the bottom three – Ipswich, Hull, Coventry – have a combined total of £48.15m.
That is roughly three per cent of the Prem’s total and 18.6 times smaller than what the Big Six is throwing around.
