If Brendan Rodgers can win the Premier League title with Liverpool this season, some of his fellow managers will not be happy. While José Mourinho and Manuel Pellegrini have been bickering over whose club is more like a little horse and Arsène Wenger has been complaining about the way his rivals spend their money, Rodgers has been accelerating past them with a team that is paid less money but wins more matches and scores more goals.

Liverpool pay their players handsomely – on average £3.4m per man per year – but those figures are some way short of the annual salaries paid by Arsenal (£3.9m), Chelsea (£4m), Manchester United (£4.3m) and Manchester City (£5.3m). The average weekly wage of £102,653 paid by Manchester City makes their first-team players the best paid in sport. According to Sporting Intelligence's Global Sports Salaries Survey for 2014, City pay better wages than the New York Yankees, the LA Dodgers, Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Photograph: Sporting Intelligence

Sporting Intelligence have conducted this survey for the past five years and have amalgamated their results to show just how well athletes are paid across their careers. Seven of the top 10 earners in the past five years have been football clubs, with Barcelona players receiving the highest salaries over the period. A "typical" Barcelona first-team player (if such a thing existed) would have earned £24,995,540 over the past five seasons. Real Madrid have the next highest five-year total (£24.4m per player), followed by the Yankees (£23.6m), Manchester City (£20.8m) and Chelsea (£20.4m). So much for little horses.

Photograph: Sporting Intelligence

To put these eye-watering numbers in context, the mean weekly wage paid to a full-time worker in the UK is £517 (before tax). Given that footballers only train and play for a few hours a week, the part-time figure of £160 a week is probably more relevant. All in all, football is not a bad job if you can get it. Don't ever listen to the sob story about footballers having short careers again.