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Insurance broker JLT Specialty (JLT) has deduced that injured Premier League players have cost their clubs a whopping $138 million in wages – and that’s just during the first half of the season.
The broker collated injury data from every Premier League match played between 1 July 2016 and 31 December 2016 where injuries causing players to miss at least one game being counted in the report.
They found there were 366 injuries in total in that period, PA Sport reported.
Basing their statistics on the average salary of each club rather than the wages of each individual player, they found Manchester City incurred the highest costs while West Brom and Burnley both paid the least amount.
During this time, Man City paid $16 million while Arsenal sat second in the list with a cost of $14 million. In third place for most wages paid to injured players was West Ham with a bill of $11.5 million.
Burnley and West Brom clocked up just $1.04 million while Bournemouth had outgoings of $1.9 million.
Man City had 17 injuries at an average cost of $937,448 while Bournemouth picked up 19 injuries during the same timescale at a cost of just $102,614.
The Premier League average for each injury was over $375,675, which highlighted the difference in wages between the higher and lower echelons of England’s top flight football clubs.
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The report also examined the severity of the injury with back and knee issues being the most severe for players to be sidelined with – missing an average of 50 and 49 days respectively.
Knee injuries were also the most common and the costliest, having occurred 63 times already this season, amounting to over $35 million in total while defenders had the most expensive injuries, costing each club an average of $405,242.
Duncan Fraser, head of sport at JLT, said: “Player burnout and injury from the gruelling schedules is becoming more common.
“Our research over the past five seasons found that December is the month where most injuries occurred.
“The lack of winter break may be one contributing factor.
“We also saw a spike in injuries during July and August, we believe this may be the result of a busy summer of football following the UEFA Euro 2016 tournament leaving many players with a shortened pre-season.”
Fraser said players’ salaries were continuing to escalate in the top division and clubs were looking for protection.
“Clubs are increasingly looking to insure their players with the use of a Wageroll Protection policy.
“That way, if a player gets injured for an extended period of time, they can claim a certain percentage of their large salary back,” he said.
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