Premier League's most overpaid XI features Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal and Tottenham stars | OneFootball

The Premier League is one of the most lucrative money-makers in all of sport.

If you're lucky enough to ply your trade in England's top-flight as a professional footballer then you can rest assured that your weekly pay packet will be able to take away a lot of your money worries.

We do, after all, live in an era where some of the world's highest-paid players are pocketing hundreds of thousands of pounds every seven days with many of them residing on English shores.

Premier League wages

However, as is the case in many other industries and careers, pay scales don't necessarily have a perfect correlation to somebody's output and performance level.

Or to put it in simpler terms: a ranking of the highest-paid players in the Premier League wouldn't have an identical order to the best performers in the division.

Besides, it's a fact of life that some high-flying big names would go through spells that make them look overpaid and fresh new faces will make their wages look measly when they break through.

So, bearing all of this in mind, we wanted to take a look at the Premier League players who would be considered the most overpaid in a world where performances and pay really did align perfectly.

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Pay vs performance

In other words, if suddenly the division's best player became the highest-paid star and so forth, who would see themselves tumble down the economic ladder the furthest?

To achieve this, we've taken the wage data over at Spotrac and compiled an XI of Premier League stars that we think fit the criteria that we've outlined above.

However, before we get stuck in, it's important to note that we're not saying that these players should literally have their pay cut because anybody playing in the Premier League is a thoroughly talented individual who deserves to take home to their family whatever they've signed up for.

Power to them for working hard to get themselves into a position to pocket such impressive money and we'd love nothing more than to be proven wrong by seeing their form pick up this season.

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Premier League's 'overpaid' XI

Oh, and this isn't any sort of commentary on how much money professional footballers should earn; our classification of 'overpaid' is merely framed within the context of 2021 Premier League wages.

But enough with the disclaimers and housekeeping because there's an XI to get stuck into and you can check it out down below to see some of the Premier League's biggest earners.

Chelsea.

RB: Matt Doherty (Tottenham Hotspur) - £65,385-per-week

Things just haven't worked out for Doherty at Spurs, so the north London club's decision to hand him heftier wages than Reece James as the league's 10th-highest-paid right-back hasn't aged well.

CB: Malang Sarr (Chelsea) - £120,000-per-week

It's baffling to think that a 22-year-old with just a handful of senior appearances for the Blues is in the Premier League's top ten highest-paid defenders with the same pay packet as Aymeric Laporte.

CB: Yerry Mina (Everton) - £120,000-per-week

Would you say that Mina is a better defender than Ruben Dias, Thiago Silva, Joao Cancelo, Kyle Walker, Joel Matip, Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen? Nope, but he reportedly earns more than all of them.

LB: Sead Kolašinac (Arsenal) - £100,000-per-week

Arsenal clearly love to spoil their left-backs because Kieran Tierney is one of just a sprinkling of players in the position to earn more than Kolašinac despite fading into obscurity at the Emirates.

CM: Tanguy Ndombele (Tottenham Hotspur) - £200,000-per-week

As natural as it might seem that Spurs' record signing is earning big bucks, even Ndombele's biggest fans would admit that his performances don't warrant higher wages than Bruno Fernandes and Fabinho earn.

CM: Saul Niguez (Chelsea) - £198,269-per-week

We don't know the politics of how Atletico Madrid and Chelsea are splitting Saul's wages, but either way, the Premier League's eighth-highest-paid midfielder playing just 94 minutes in the competition this season is wild.

CM: Thomas Partey (Arsenal) - £200,000-per-week

We're still waiting for the moment that Partey shows off the undoubted talent that he possesses in an Arsenal shirt, but for now, collecting the same wages as Thiago Alcantara doesn't seem right.

FW: Timo Werner (Chelsea) - £272,000-per-week

You can never fault Werner for a lack of trying, but despite the German's superb worth ethic, it's hard to justify a player with just seven Premier League goals in 43 games as the competition's fifth-highest-earning forward.

ST: Anthony Martial (Manchester United) - £250,000-per-week

With each passing month, Martial's United career seems more and more unsalvageable and that's despite the Red Devils paying him bigger wages than Mohamed Salah and Harry Kane get their hands on.

FW: Andriy Yarmolenko (West Ham United) - £115,000-per-week

Let's zoom out for a second and digest the fact that Yarmolenko, despite never really finding his feet in England, reportedly earns more than Sadio Mane, Gabriel Jesus and Diogo Jota. Yup, seriously.

Still time to turn things around

If we're all being completely honest, these 11 players are currently ranking far higher amongst their Premier League colleagues for wages than they would be if they were organised by form.

However, there is one common thread here and it's that every single player in the line-up has talent in abundance, so there's no reason to think that they won't kick on to justify their hearty wages.

Whether it's Saul finally adapting to the Premier League or Sarr getting his big chance on loan, it could only be a few weeks or months before some of these stars don't look so overpaid anymore.

Like we say, though, there are so many things - both football related and otherwise - that can affect a player's form and frankly, power to them for picking up such tidy cash for them and their loved ones.

At the end of the day, nobody's going to turn down £100,000-per-week no matter how out of form you might be.

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