Barcelona top Europe's biggest wage spenders

World football's biggest wage bills make for astonishing reading. Barcelona pay their players an eye-watering £279million per year, with Manchester United and Chelsea second and third on the list.

Premier League clubs dominate the top 25, with even relegated Sunderland paying more in wages than the vastly more talented Atletico Madrid.

Playing in the world's richest football league comes with serious problems according to Steve Parish, chairman and co-owner of Crystal Palace.

In an interview last week, the 51-year-old millionaire businessman said the pressure of running a top-flight team is 'almost unbearable'. Underpinning that stress, he said, is the need to stay in the Premier League or face 'the financial Armageddon that is relegation'.

Premier League clubs increasingly pay a premium not just for transfer fees but for wages too. And the upshot is relatively low returns on the pitch for massive spending off it.

'I might have the 20th biggest wage bill in the world,' Parish told The Times. 'Do I have the 20th best side? I very much doubt it.'

In fact, according to a new Sportsmail analysis of salaries, Palace have about the 25th biggest wage bill in the world. And Parish is correct to assume he doesn't have the 20th best side.

Our table ranks the leading wage spenders for the 2016-17 season that concludes with Saturday's Champions League final.

Official financial numbers for the 2016-17 campaign won't be revealed until later this year at the earliest and by spring 2018 for many. Hence numbers are based on previous spending and estimated increases.

Taking Manchester United as an example; we know from financial data already released that their bill for the first nine months of 2016-17 was £192million, up almost 13 per cent on last year's figure.

So we estimate their full-season bill, including bonuses for two cup wins, one in Europe, will be around £265m — the biggest club wage bill for a single season in English history.

Champions Chelsea will not be too far behind that figure, and Manchester City not far behind that. City's wage bill in 2015-16 was just shy of £200m but will have jumped thanks to Pep Guardiola's arrival and £168m of signings last summer.

Everton's chairman Bill Kenwright has already said he expects their 2015-16 £84m wage bill to soar past £100m for 2016-17. Even 'small' club wages are growing hugely.

Bournemouth's wage bill was £59.6m in 2015 and will be closer to £70m this season.

On the one hand, Premier League wealth should mean most clubs in the division — even mid-ranking teams from West Ham and Southampton to Stoke and Leicester — should be able to afford to compete with all but the world's very biggest clubs in terms of wage deals for stars — Palace themselves hired Yohan Cabaye on big money from French champions PSG.

But the flipside of wealth is that transfer fees and wage demands for players moving to the Premier League — or between their clubs — have ballooned.

Premier League spending last summer was close to £1.2bn, almost double the figure from three years earlier.

This summer it is likely to reach £1.5bn. At a time when 'ordinary' Premier League players could start to command fees of £20m and basic wages of £50,000 a week to play in teams who struggle to get inside the top 100 in Europe... well, maybe you can see Parish's point.