Manchester City are first ¬1 billion squad - study

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Premier League champions Manchester City are the first team in football history to spend more than €1 billion to assemble their squad, a study has shown.

Data from the Swiss-based CIES Football Observatory showed that Pep Guardiola’s club spent €1.014bn on their group of players.

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French champions Paris Saint-Germain were second having spent €913 million and Spain’s Real Madrid were third with €902m.

Manchester United (€751m) have the second-most expensive squad in the Premier League followed by Champions League winners Liverpool (€639m).

This study follows a report from Deloitte which showed European clubs from the “big five” leagues spent over €5bn during the summer transfer window for the first time.

The report said the Premier League average was €345m while La Liga and Serie A both averaged €167m. The average spend in the Bundesliga was €124m while Ligue 1 averaged the lowest spend among the big five leagues with €118m.

At the other end of the scale, Germany’s Paderborn had the cheapest squad in the study (€4m), which looked at teams from the English, German, Italian, French and Spanish top flights.

The top 10 clubs to spend the most on current squad:

1. Manchester City (€1.014bn)
2. Paris Saint-Germain (€913m)
3. Real Madrid (€902m)
4. Manchester United (€751m)
5. Juventus (€719m)
6. Barcelona (€697m)
7. Liverpool (€639m)
8. Chelsea (€561m)
9. Atletico Madrid (€550m)
10. Arsenal (€498m)

This article was originally published by Espnfc.com. Read the original article here.