The website www.financialfairplay.co.uk – which is dedicated to reporting on and examining issues relating to financial fair play -  have produced a table which illustrates the performance of each Premier League club in relation to their expenditure on player wages. And it makes for interesting reading, unless you happen to be a Manchester City fan.

The teams are first ranked according to wages, with Manchester City far out ahead with a wage bill of £200 million, followed by Chelsea on £172m and their local rivals Man United on £162 m.

At the foot of the wage bill table Norwich, Southampton, Wigan, Reading and Swansea combine for a total wage bill of £183m, £17m less than the current champions.

The findings becoming particularly interesting when we look at the second side of the graph, which is a Cann Table, or a graph which gives every point the same vertical scale – so we get a visual representation of how far apart teams are.

We can clearly see City are the big underperformers, with  QPR, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Aston Villa all also performing below what could be expected with their respective wage bills.

The big overperformers are, unsurprisingly, Swansea and Everton, with Spurs and West Brom also making excellent use of their relatively limited resources. Manchester United are also, despite spending the league’s third highest amount on wages, significantly overperforming.

Premier League Financial Table V Points Table