It was September of last year when Sam Allardyce uttered these infamous words while manager of Blackburn Rovers:

“I’m not suited to Bolton or Blackburn, I would be more suited to Inter Milan or Real Madrid. It wouldn’t be a problem to me to go and manage those clubs because I would win the double or the league every time. Give me Manchester United or Chelsea and I would do the same, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

Three months later, with his club sitting in 13th position, Big Sam was sacked. His words had nothing to do with him losing his job at Blackburn, but his above quote definitely triggered many guffaws as well as a lot of debate regarding how a manager should be measured based on the players (and money for transfers) at his disposal.

Fast forward to the end of the Premier League season this past weekend, and thanks to wonderful research by Nick Harris from the Sporting Intelligence website, we now have a Value for Money Table which calculates the cost per points achieved. So, for example, the Sporting Intelligence took the wage bills for the most recent season available (2009-10) and calculated that Blackpool spent £18.6 million in wages for the season. When you divide that amount by the number of points they achieved this season, 39, you get their cost per point this season which was £476,923.

Taking a club’s wages and then dividing it by the number of points they achieved is a great leveler. It’s a fair comparison to see whether a manager (and his team) underperformed or overperformed.

But where did your favorite club finish in the Premier League Value for Money Table? How did your manager do compared to Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and others? Read on to discover the answers.

First, before reviewing the chart, understand that the average cost per point was £1.25 million. Second, there is greater detail about the end of this post regarding how the formulas were calculated (and how the wages for Newcastle, West Bromwich Albion and Blackpool were factored since they were in the Championship last season). And now the chart:

There are so many observations that came be taken from this above league table. Liverpool have the worst cost per points total. This wasn’t helped by Rafa Benitez’s transfer signing of Alberto Aquilani, nor the decisions by Tom Hicks and George Gillett. Elsewhere near the bottom of the table you have big spenders Chelsea and Manchester City. After Aston Villa spent a lot on wages last season, it’s no surprise that Randy Lerner wanted to tighten his spending belt this season. Surprisingly Arsenal is fifth from bottom.

Near the top of the table, hats off to clubs such as Blackpool, West Brom, Wolves, Birmingham and Wigan for achieving what they did with the players they had.

What observations can you make from the above table? Share your feedback in the comments section below.

Sporting Intelligence’s formula: “To reach our figures we began by looking at wage bills at each of the 20 football clubs (as opposed to their parent companies) for the most recent season available, 209-10. So for Bolton, for example, the accounts of Bolton Wanderers Football & Athletic Company Limited, as opposed to Burnden Leisure, which also owns a hotel. For Liverpool, it was the Liverpool Football Club and Athletic Grounds Limited, not the parent company, and so on.

“The specific figures we used from each set of accounts was ‘Wages and salaries’ (not the headline total wage bill, which includes social security payments by clubs but not to staff). In Liverpool’s case, the relevant number was £108.549m, for example, while at Birmingham it was £32.3m, and so on.

“Next we adjusted the 2009-10 numbers for wage inflation (in all cases) and for promotion (in the cases of Newcastle, West Brom and Blackpool, whose wage bills will naturally have increased to a significant extent from 2009-10 in the Championship). And then we divided the total by the number of points.

These wages include pay for all players, managers, coaches, back-up staff and other FC staff. As a like-for-like comparison, it’s probably as close to accurate as we can get short of actually having 2010-11’s numbers.”

H/T Sporting Intelligence.