While Pep Guardiola is absolutely right to admit that Manchester City have under-performed this season, the scale of his team’s failure is nothing compared to that of Manchester United.
An analysis by The Times into the value for money that each top-flight club has achieved in the Premier League this season shows that City have been a big disappointment — but José Mourinho’s side are ranked as the biggest losers, worse even than Sunderland.
The value-for-money table compares each club’s most recent published annual wage bill with the number of points that they have won in the Premier League. In terms of points won per £1 million spent on wages, Tottenham Hotspur, second in the league table, emerge as the team that got most value for their outlay, followed by Bournemouth and Everton.
The analysis suggests that Mauricio Pochettino of Spurs rather than Chelsea’s Antonio Conte may be the most deserving recipient of the manager-of-the-season award. The figures also highlight the wage gap between the “big five” clubs — City, United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool — and the rest.
Those five clubs have been prepared to commit salaries of about £200 million a year or more to compete for a top-four spot. Yet clubs such as Spurs can still achieve remarkable results for a wage bill around half that figure — though it perhaps needs an exceptional manager and a chairman who has a rigorous attitude to transfers and contract demands.
The big five each had a wage bill about double or more than the £104.6 million spent by Tottenham in the 2015-16 season and, according to Spurs’ annual account, their base salary bill was only £100 million, a slight drop on the previous year. Another £4.5 million of “other employment contract costs” was also charged to the income statement.
The salary bills should provide an accurate reflection of their comparative wages expenditure for this season. Each club’s wages generally tend to rise by a similar percentage, with the exception of Bournemouth and Watford who were in the Sky Bet Championship in 2014-15.
United were the biggest payers and although all will be forgiven should they win the Europa League final next week and secure a Champions League slot, their struggles in Premier League football are underlined by the figures showing that they paid £3.57 million in wages for every point secured compared to Tottenham’s £1.3 million.
iven that the analysis does not rank the promoted clubs in the same way — as their wage bills applied when they were in the Championship and are not comparable to those in the top flight last season — Liverpool had the biggest year-on-year wages increase of all clubs, up 25 per cent to overtake City and Arsenal. Among the big five, Chelsea performed by far the best in terms of value for money as Conte’s team secured the title.
Most of those managers shortlisted for the Barclays manager-of-the- season award, have performed well according to The Times’ analysis. They include Conte, Pochettino, Bournemouth’s Eddie Howe and West Bromwich Albion’s Tony Pulis.
Another award nominee is Paul Clement of Swansea City who also achieved well above average in terms of wages compared to points won. However, Swansea’s early-season struggles put them among the under-performers overall.
The failure of David Moyes at Sunderland is put into stark relief by the figures which show that the northeast club’s wage bill was similar to that of many upper or mid-table sides including Everton and substantially more than Bournemouth.
Ronald Koeman, a consistent over-achiever at Southampton and now at Everton, is perhaps the manager most unlucky to miss out on a nomination.
Of the three promoted clubs only Burnley have survived. Their manager, Sean Dyche, is another manager-of-the-season award nominee.
(The Times)
