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2.92 3 Manchester City 3.13 5 Liverpool 2.74 5 Tottenham Hotspur 1.69 6 Everton 1.28 7 Aston Villa 1.54 12 West Ham United 1.31 14 Stoke City 0.91 14 Newcastle United 1.44 14 Sunderland 1.19 15 West Bromwich Albion 0.79 16 Swansea City 0.75 16 Fulham 1.10 18 Wigan Athletic 0.84 19 Blackburn Rovers 0.87 21 Southampton 0.83 21 Portsmouth 1.47 22 Bournemouth 0.58 22 Bolton Wanderers 0.94 23 Hull City 0.63 24 Norwich City 0.69 24 Birmingham City 0.59 25 Reading 0.66 25 Middlesbrough 0.66 25 Leicester City 0.60 25 Wolverhampton Wanderers 0.53 25 Burnley 0.38 27 Cardiff City 0.50 27 Queens Park Rangers 0.80 27 Brentford 0.28 27 Crystal Palace 0.60 27 Watford 0.41 27 Sheffield United 0.60 28 Brighton & Hove Albion 0.37 29 Derby County 0.42 29 Ipswich Town 0.33 31 Nottingham Forest 0.40 32 Blackpool 0.24 33 Preston North End 0.25 33 Charlton Athletic 0.44 34 Sheffield Wednesday 0.23 34 Leeds United 0.36 34 Bristol City 0.29 34 Plymouth Argyle 0.19 36 Colchester United 0.15 37 Millwall 0.23 37 Huddersfield Town 0.23 38 Coventry City 0.26 39 Barnsley 0.17 40 Rotherham United 0.10 41 Peterborough United 0.12 41 Southend United 0.14 42 Scunthorpe United 0.11 42 MK Dons 0.12 43

      In short, wages buy success (something Stefan has been banging on about since his first published article on football in 1991). We have yet to see anyone produce a credible alternative theory. Did Manchester City or Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea hire great managers who won titles, but then also decide out of the goodness of the owners’ hearts to pay the players exorbitant wages? No, they had to hire players whose pay predicted their ability to win games.

      True, some players are paid either more or less than they are worth. In fact, it’s an agent’s job to persuade clubs to pay excessive salaries. The former Dutch defender Rody Turpijn has written up a lovely vignette showing how this works. In 1998, the young Turpijn’s career at Ajax Amsterdam was falling apart. The player had only one thing going for him: he was represented by Mino Raiola, a chubby little Dutch-Italian former pizza restaurateur who was becoming one of Europe’s most powerful agents.

      Raiola and Turpijn drove to a motorway hotel (classic venue of football deals) to meet the chairman of the small Dutch club De Graafschap. Raiola kicked off by impressing the chairman with some gossip about Juventus’s Pavel Nedved. Then the chairman wrote on a piece of paper the salary he was offering Turpijn. It was more than Turpijn earned at Ajax.

      But to Turpijn’s surprise, Raiola shouted: ‘Do you know what he earns at Ajax?

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