Transfer spending in the Premier League’s summer window passed £2.36billion ($2.97b) and the outlay in wages in the world’s richest league is similarly lavish.
Already this season, Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard, Newcastle United striker Callum Wilson and Manchester City duo Kyle Walker and Bernardo Silva have signed new contracts, but who is the best paid member of each team?
Some clubs have a player whose wage far outstrips the rest of the dressing room, while others have a group of top earners, here The Athletic’s reporters explain the situation at each of the Premier League’s 20 clubs.
Arsenal
With Arsenal’s young core rapidly developing, the club has been proactive in rewarding the players improved terms.
Unlike when Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang earned significantly above the rest of the squad, though, Arsenal have sought to create a sense of parity among their top-tier earners.
In the last calendar year, they have tied down Aaron Ramsdale, Gabriel, William Saliba, Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli to long-term contracts.
Ben White is the next player who will be looking to join them but, given an established starting player in the top six usually earns six-figures, passing that figure on each of these deals has significantly raised the wage budget.
Saka’s rise was the most notable having gone from earning £60,000 a week to around £290,000, which weighs in at £15 million a year.
The variety of clauses in contracts for team bonuses and performance-related incentives makes it difficult to establish a categorical top earner but club captain Odegaard, who signed his new five-year deal last week, is now in that top tier with Saka, Saliba, Declan Rice and Gabriel Jesus.
Jordan Campbell
Aston Villa
Even though Aston Villa’s overall wage bill has risen sharply in recent years, the club remain mindful and it has not been stretched out of proportion. Abiding with financial fair play regulations was a theme of the summer, as was finding a suitor for Philippe Coutinho, who was among the top earners at £135,000 ($169,000) per week. Now, Lucas Digne is in the higher-bracket of earners at comfortably over £100,000, while the free transfers of midfielders Youri Tielemans and Boubacar Kamara came with lucrative signing-on fees that reflect their current salaries. Summer signings Pau Torres and Moussa Diaby are also in the top bracket and, like all, this can vary depending on the structure of their contracts.
Jacob Tanswell
Bournemouth
Bournemouth’s wage bill has risen sharply this year, backed by additional funds from owner Bill Foley. The American has helped transform the squad, bringing in players such as high earners Justin Kluivert and Tyler Adams, while giving lucrative new contracts to Dominic Solanke, Neto and Philip Billing in line with their standing in the side. All four, dependent on the structure of each respective contract, are among the top tier of earners.
Jacob Tanswell
Brentford
Brentford finished ninth in the top flight last season and only missed out on qualifying for the Europa Conference League by a couple of points. When you realise they have one of the lowest wage bills in the division, it makes their achievements look even more impressive.
Club captain Pontus Jansson was the best-paid player on around £60,000 a week until he returned to his boyhood club Malmo in the summer. A number of senior players, including Bryan Mbeumo and Mathias Jensen, have signed new contracts in the past couple of years, which puts them at the top with Ivan Toney and Ben Mee on around £50,000 a week.
Jay Harris
Brighton & Hove Albion
By far the biggest earner at Brighton this season is loan signing Ansu Fati. They are paying 80 per cent of the 20-year-old Barcelona forward’s weekly wage of £160,000.
Brighton pushed the boat out to land Fati at the end of the summer transfer window after Julio Enciso suffered a knee injury in training that will rule the Paraguayan prospect out until the New Year.
The contribution of £128,000 per week to Fati’s salary is a lot more than the top earners among the permanent members of the squad. Brighton had the second-lowest wage bill in the Premier League last season, above only Brentford.
Fati’s wage is far higher than Brighton’s other players (Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)
Pay is increasing, which reflects the club’s improved finishes of ninth under Graham Potter and sixth under Roberto De Zerbi in the past two seasons.
Long-serving skipper and central defender Lewis Dunk, who is back in the England squad, and former Liverpool midfielder Adam Lallana are understood to be the highest earners at over £70,000 per week. Most players are on between £35,000 and £50,000.
Andy Naylor
Burnley
Burnley’s wage bill has changed significantly in recent seasons. After relegation to the Championship, a number of the club’s high earners, including Ben Mee, Nick Pope and James Tarkowski, departed. It slashed the wage bill ahead of the Championship season, but now they are back in the Premier League, it has increased.
Those who remain from the pre-Kompany era make up a significant portion of the highest earners at the club. Striker Wout Weghorst, who is on loan at Hoffenheim, Charlie Taylor and Josh Brownhill are towards the top of the list.
There were 15 new additions in the summer made up largely of young, high-potential players who will fit within the club’s wage structure. New deals were also handed out to Josh Cullen, Anass Zaroury and Manuel Benson to reward their progress from last season and give them an increased salary.
Andy Jones
Chelsea
Raheem Sterling has the dubious honour of succeeding Romelu Lukaku, who is now on loan at Roma, as Chelsea’s highest-paid player.
The England international was the first signing made by the Todd Boehly-Clearlake consortium in the summer of 2022 and is very much an exception to the norm.
His salary is in excess of £300,000 a week and does not include a percentage pay cut for Chelsea’s failure to qualify for the Champions League.
Sterling is comfortably the biggest earner now with a number of those on significant money sold or let go in the summer.
All the other new arrivals from the last three windows are on much lower sums as Chelsea look to get the wage bill under control. It means Sterling is under more scrutiny from the hierarchy and the fanbase to prove his worth.
Simon Johnson
Crystal Palace
Dean Henderson, Palace’s major signing in the summer, arrived from Manchester United, so it may not be a surprise that he is now their highest earner. He had been earning over £100,000 a week before a move to Palace for an initial £15million, which could rise to £20m.
Palace have pursued a more sustainable strategy over the past two seasons, turning to younger talent on lower wages. Wilfried Zaha, previously the club’s highest earner, left for Galatasaray in the summer despite an offer worth £200,000 a week.
Luka Milivojevic and James McArthur, both relatively high earners, also left at the end of their contracts. High wages are an outlier at Palace.
Matt Woosnam
Everton
Under Farhad Moshiri, Everton have regularly handed players contracts they simply would not get elsewhere.
At its peak, the club’s wage bill was the largest outside of the Premier League’s so-called ‘Big Six’, with even fringe players receiving sums of around £100,000 a week in some cases. The problem for Everton was that such an approach was unsustainable given their relatively modest income streams, creating financial issues that linger to this day.
The past few years have seen attempts — sometimes frantic — to reduce that wage bill. Inroads have been made by current director of football Kevin Thelwell but there is an acceptance that there is still a way to go before the problems are resolved.
Pickford is among one of Everton’s biggest earners (George Wood/Getty Images)
Fringe player Andre Gomes is among the very highest earners at the club, an unwitting symbol of the wastage of the Moshiri years.
Goalkeeper Jordan Pickford’s new deal, signed earlier this year, makes far more sense. A key figure in recent seasons, the England No 1’s salary of comfortably in excess of £100,000 appears far better value for money.
Patrick Boyland
Fulham
Aleksandar Mitrovic was Fulham’s highest-paid player coming into the summer on a salary in excess of £100,000 per week. His departure for Saudi Arabian side Al Hilal saw him relinquish that title and his successor is now thought to be Joao Palhinha, the Portugal international.
He was rewarded for his excellent form last season — and missing out on a deadline-day move to Bayern Munich — by agreeing to new terms earlier this month. His new contract is a five-year agreement with a club option of a further year.
Peter Rutzler
Liverpool
Mohamed Salah became the highest-paid player in Liverpool’s history in the summer of 2022 when he signed a three-year contract worth in excess of £350,000 per week.
It brought to an end a long-running saga over his future with a compromise finally reached between the club’s owners and his agent, Ramy Abbas. There had been the growing threat of Salah leaving as a free agent, with his previous deal expiring in 2023.
Salah’s preference was always to stay at Anfield, but he wanted a contract that recognised his status as one of the greatest players in the world.
He has proved to be worth every penny. He scored 30 goals in all competitions in 2022-23 and already has four to his name this season.
At the age of 31, he remains at the peak of his powers and that’s why Liverpool fought so hard to keep him this summer, rejecting an offer rising to £150million from Saudi Pro League outfit Al Ittihad.
James Pearce
Luton Town
Ross Barkley’s wages have dropped significantly from his four and a half years at Chelsea, but he is still Luton’s biggest earner. His arrival on a free transfer in August, after his release by Nice, was an unexpected deviation from the club’s usual recruitment policy, which has largely been based on signing up-and-coming players from Championship or League One clubs.
Barkley is earning less than he has previously (Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)
Marvelous Nakamba, joining from Aston Villa after a successful loan, is another expensive addition, but even these are modest acquisitions by top-flight standards. Luton’s total wage bill this season will be in the region of £30million, far lower than any other Premier League club.
Oliver Kay
Manchester City
Erling Haaland is, of course, Manchester City’s highest earner, with estimations varying from “he earns just a bit more than Kevin De Bruyne“, as the club are happy to admit, up to around £900,000 per week, which the club completely deny.
De Bruyne earns around £400,000 per week and he had to fight for that, using data compiled by experts to spell out his value to the club. Haaland’s standing in world football spoke for itself when he agreed to join City last year and given the amount of goals he has scored since the move, he can say that he has been worth the outlay.
Sam Lee
Manchester United
Manchester United’s eye-watering £384million wage bill for the 2021-22 season set a Premier League record, but fortunately it has since been slashed after the departures of two big earners.
First, Cristiano Ronaldo’s deal — worth an estimated £450,000 a week — was torn up, then David de Gea’s £375,000-a-week deal was allowed to run down and expire, leaving Casemiro as the highest-paid player in the Old Trafford dressing room.
The five-time Champions League winner became one of United’s top earners upon arrival, with his pay packet in a similar ballpark to De Gea’s, and United could be satisfied that they were getting their money’s worth last season as he was widely hailed a transformative presence.
But now 31 years old, he has struggled to hit the same heights at the start of the new campaign. His deal is incentivised, as with all major contracts at Old Trafford, but it still has three years to run.
Time will tell whether Casemiro’s deal becomes another big contract United seek to free themselves from.
Mark Critchley
Newcastle United
Newcastle have been careful while upgrading their squad to ensure that any new arrivals do not break planned wage structures — an emphasis is on investment in the squad being sustainable as well as protecting squad dynamics.
Guimaraes is expected to sign a new deal at Newcastle (Getty Images)
This means that when players such as Alexander Isak and Sandro Tonali arrived at St James’ Park in recent windows, their salaries did not totally eclipse existing players such as Bruno Guimaraes. The Brazilian is set to sign a new deal, which is expected to make him the highest-paid player at the club once again, expected to be more than £180,000 per week.
Jacob Whitehead
Nottingham Forest
Another busy summer of recruitment will have seen Nottingham Forest add to their wage bill with the capture of a number of high earners.
Chris Wood, who arrived last January from Newcastle, is understood to be earning in the region of £90,000 a week and was the top earner in the squad.
Ibrahim Sangare, the £30million signing from PSV, is believed to be in a similar ballpark, wages-wise, but it is unclear whether he has eclipsed the New Zealand international. Similarly, Divock Origi, who joined on loan from AC Milan, is reportedly on a contract worth between £90,000 and £100,000 per week in Italy.
Nico Dominguez, the Argentina international who joined from Bologna, will also be among the higher earners on the wage bill.
Paul Taylor
Sheffield United
A year ago — or even when the club was last in the Premier League, during the 2020-21 season — the highest earner was undoubtedly Sander Berge, United’s record transfer.
The Norwegian is understood to have come in on about £50,000 per week. His departure, however, has muddied the waters, with several players now believed to be earning a similar amount at the top of the wage scale. John Egan is among those, along with summer additions Cameron Archer and Vini Souza. Loanee James McAtee will be on a very good wage but Manchester City are likely to be paying a decent chunk.
Richard Sutcliffe
Tottenham Hotspur
Following Harry Kane’s departure this summer, Tottenham’s captain and leading scorer Son Heung-min is the club’s highest earner, picking up around £200,000 a week, including bonuses.
After Son, the next highest Spurs earner is surprisingly Ivan Perisic, who is out for the season with a serious knee injury. The two-year deal he signed in the summer of 2022 is worth around £180,000 per week.
Tanguy Ndombele, who has been among Tottenham’s top earners since arriving four years ago for a club-record fee, is spending this season on loan at Galatasaray.
Charlie Eccleshare
West Ham United
Lucas Paqueta is West Ham United’s highest earner, earning in the region of £150,000 a week. West Ham captain Kurt Zouma (£125,000) and goalkeeper Alphonse Areola (£120,000) are the other high earners. Since joining from Lyon in August 2022, Paqueta has developed into a key player for manager David Moyes.
Roshane Thomas
Wolverhampton Wanderers
Pablo Sarabia has yet to establish himself as a regular starter, but his impressive CV, allied to the nature of his transfer from Paris Saint-Germain in January, means he is now comfortably Wolves’ biggest earner.
The club paid a transfer fee of just £4.4million for Sarabia, meaning they were able to commit more money than normal to his salary, which would have been high anyway by virtue of a resume that includes spells at Real Madrid and Sevilla.
Nelson Semedo and Matheus Cunha are among the higher earners, too, but heavyweight figures who could challenge Sarabia’s earning power, such as Joao Moutinho and Diego Costa, departed in the summer.
Steve Madeley
