Does Wage Spending Determine Premier League Success?

In football, money talks, but does it actually translate to points? Premier League clubs spend millions trying to build the most formidable team in the league. For the big clubs, enormous wage bills are simply just another part of the game. Take for instance teams like Manchester City and Arsenal that are able to afford some of the highest salaries in football. But does all this spending really translate into wins for the teams?

Intuition might suggest that higher wage bills attract better players, and better players produce better results. Football, however, is hardly that simple. Clubs such as Brentford and Nottingham Forest show that relatively modest wage bills can still produce impressive league campaigns, while some of the Premier League’s biggest spenders fail to turn their financial firepower into success.

So, can a club’s wage bills predict their performance? And perhaps more importantly, which clubs are getting the most, or least, out of the money they spend. To answer these questions, I analysed wage bills and performance for all 20 League clubs across the 2023–24, 2024–25, and 2025–26 seasons.

Why Should Wages Matter?

At its core, a football club's wage bill is an investment in human capital. Players are the club's most important productive asset: their technical ability, decision-making, fitness and experience all contribute to the team's ability to win matches.

Economic theory therefore gives us a simple prediction. Clubs that can afford to pay higher wages should, on average, be able to attract and retain more productive players. A larger wage bill may allow a club to assemble a stronger squad, reduce the impact of injuries and compete more effectively over a 38-game season.

But this relationship should not be interpreted as a guarantee. Money can buy access to talent, but it cannot eliminate uncertainty. Injuries, managerial decisions, tactics, player development and simple variation in results can all affect a club's performance.

This creates an interesting economic question. If higher wages give clubs access to better talent, how much of a club's success can actually be explained by its wage bill?

Data and Methodology

To investigate the relationship between spending and performance, I collected data from all 20 Premier League clubs across three seasons: 2023–24, 2024–25 and 2025–26, giving a total of 60 club-season observations.

I use annual player wage expenditure as a measure of how much a club spends on its playing squad, and league points as the measure of performance. Wage data were obtained from Capology, which provides estimates of clubs' gross player salaries. Because these figures are estimates rather than official financial statements, they should be treated as a consistent approximation of each club's wage expenditure rather than an exact accounting figure.

I then plotted each club's wage bill against its league points and fitted a linear regression to estimate the strength of the relationship between the two variables.

Finally, I calculated each club's residual—the difference between its actual points total and the number of points predicted by the regression. I also calculated points earned per £10 million in wages to examine how efficiently clubs converted their spending into league performance.

This allows us to look at the question from two perspectives: does spending more generally lead to better results, and which clubs get the most from the money they spend?

Data Analysis

So does spending win more points? The data suggests, on average, yes! The scatter plot shows a clear positive relationship between the club’s wage bills and the league points that they earn. Clubs with higher wage bills tend to earn more points. That said, there is considerable variation around the trend-line.

The most intuitive way to interpret the slope is that an additional £10 million in annual wages is associated with approximately 2 additional league points.

The correlation coefficient, (r = 0.697), indicates a relatively strong positive relationship between wages and points. Meanwhile, the (R²) value of approximately 0.486 means that differences in wage bills account for around 48.6% of the variation in league points within our sample.

The relationship is also statistically significant, with a p-value below 0.001. In other words, it would be extremely unlikely to observe a relationship this strong in this sample if wage expenditure and league performance were completely unrelated.

However, there is an important distinction between association and causation. The regression shows that higher wages and better performance tend to occur together.

However, it does not prove that increasing a club's wage bill will automatically cause it to earn more points. Successful clubs can generate greater revenues, allowing them to pay higher wages in the first place. The relationship may therefore run in both directions.

So while money appears to matter, it clearly does not tell the whole story. The clubs sitting furthest above and below our trend line help reveal what the wage bill misses.

So Who Beat the Model?

The regression gives us an average relationship between wages and points, but averages can hide some fascinating exceptions. To identify them, I looked at each club's residual. A residual is simply the difference between the points a club actually earned and the number of points our regression predicted based on its wage bill. A positive residual means a club earned more points than its wage bill would predict. A negative residual means it earned fewer.

The biggest positive residual in my dataset belonged to Nottingham Forest in 2024–25, which earned approximately 22.3 more points than predicted by the model. Liverpool in the same season also significantly exceeded expectations, while Arsenal and Liverpool did so in 2023–24.

At the other end of the table, Southampton in 2024–25 recorded the largest negative residual, earning approximately 28.5 fewer points than predicted. Manchester United's 2024–25 season was another notable underperformance, with the club falling almost 28 points below its predicted total.

These differences highlight an important limitation of using wages as a measure of performance. If wages explained everything, the clubs would sit neatly along the regression line. Instead, there are substantial deviations in both directions. The residuals therefore point towards everything the wage bill cannot capture: tactics, coaching, recruitment, injuries, player development and perhaps simply the unpredictability of football.

In other words, money may give a club a stronger hand—but it does not decide how that hand is played.

Does Spending More Mean Spending Better?

If higher wages are associated with more points, it might seem that the best strategy is simply to spend as much as possible. But my data tells a more complicated story.

To investigate this, I calculated points earned per £10 million of wages for every club-season. This gives us a simple measure of how efficiently clubs converted their wage expenditure into league points.

The results reveal a striking contrast:

Brentford's 2024–25 campaign stands out. The club earned 10.05 points for every £10 million spent on wages, more than five times Southampton's 1.92.

Manchester City provides an interesting contrast. City finished third with an impressive 71 points in 2024–25, yet their enormous wage bill meant they earned only 2.54 points per £10 million. Their absolute performance was strong, but their spending was far less efficient.

This doesn't mean that Brentford had a better season than Manchester City. Points per £10 million measures efficiency, not overall success. A club can spend heavily and achieve an excellent points total while still being less efficient than a lower-spending club.

The comparison suggests that the real competitive advantage may not simply be having more money, but using that money effectively.

What the Numbers Don't Tell Us

My results suggest that money matters in Premier League football, but there are several reasons not to take the relationship at face value.

First, the wage figures are estimates rather than official club accounts. They provide a consistent way to compare clubs, but they may not capture every form of player compensation.

Second, correlation does not equal causation. Higher wages may help clubs attract better players, but successful clubs also tend to generate more revenue and therefore have more money available to spend on wages. Success and spending can therefore reinforce each other.

Finally, football performance depends on far more than wages. Coaching, tactics, recruitment, injuries, player development and luck can all influence the number of points a club earns. Our residual analysis illustrates just how large these differences can be.

So, Does Spending Money Really Win Games?

To an extent, yes—but not by itself.

Across 60 Premier League club-seasons, higher wage bills were strongly associated with higher league points, with wages explaining approximately 48.6% of the variation in points in our sample.

But the other half of the story is arguably more interesting. Clubs such as Brentford and Nottingham Forest demonstrated that relatively modest wage bills can produce impressive results when resources are used effectively, while some of the league's biggest spenders have achieved much lower returns on their wage expenditure.

The lesson is not that money doesn't matter. It clearly does. Rather, money creates opportunities. How a club uses it determines how much value it gets from them. In the Premier League, perhaps the most valuable resource isn't simply having a bigger wage bill—but knowing how to spend it.