The English Premiership’s most costly bench-warmers have been revealed today in a new list published by football scouting website IMScouting.com. The list gives a “Cost per game” value for each club’s top benchwarmer, i.e. a ratio of the player’s salary divided by the number of games played since August 2007. Unsurprisingly, the kings of injuries (Man Utd’s Gary Neville, Man City’s Valeri Bojinov, and Newcastle’s Kieron Dyer at the top) reign supreme.

If you recall, this list is somewhat similar to the one done by Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport about a year ago (see The 10 Most Expensive Benchwarmers of 2007-08 here on SL), except they didn’t use salary but transfer fees in order to make their ranking.

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For the English Premiership, heading the league is West Ham’s injury-prone Kieron Dyer, who having played no more than two Premiership games since August 2007 has cost the Hammers an estimated £1,100,000 per game. Wow.

He is closely followed by Manchester United’s Gary Neville, who is only now returning to first team action following a succession of long-term injuries. Since the start of last season, Neville has played just four Premiership matches for the Premier League Champions, putting his estimated cost per game at £840,000.

Manchester City fans won’t be surprised to see the unfortunate Valeri Bojinov as their club’s most costly non-performer. Since signing for the Eastlands club in the summer of 2007, Bojinov has played a mere four games due to injury, putting his cost to City at an estimated £480,000 per game.

Other high profile names on the list include Tottenham’s perennially-crocked Ledley King, costing an estimated £285,000 per game since last August, and Chelsea’s Carlo Cudicini, who has cost his club an estimated £225,000 per game over the last season. Pretty expensive for a back-up keeper right? Then again, if you’re Roman Abramovich you can afford it…

Everton supporters will be hoping that Louis Saha starts delivering more value for money than his estimated current £67,000 per game, whilst Sunderland manager Roy Keane may start wondering if his old friend Dwight Yorke has been worth an estimated £58,000 per game since joining the Black Cats.

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As mentioned, IMScouting.com (football’s largest new database for football professionals and fans around the world) created the list by calculating the ratio of estimated salary against Premiership games played amongst players at each top flight club since August 2007. At the time this article published, that was a period of roughly 46 weeks.

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Premier League’s Most Expensive Non-Starters
Player	Team	Games played	Weekly Salary (£)	Cost per game (£)
Kieron Dyer	West Ham	2	47,500	1,100,000
Gary Neville	Man Utd	4	70,000	840,000
Valeri Bojinov	Man City	4	40,000	480,000
Ledley King	Spurs	8	47,500	285,000
Carlo Cudicini	Chelsea	10	47,000	225,000
Heider Helguson	Bolton	7	24,000	165,000
Steven Sidwell	Aston Villa	15	44,500	142,000
Tomas Rosicky	Arsenal	18	47,500	127,000
Mark Viduka	Newcastle	26	55,500	103,000
David Nugent	Portsmouth	15	32,000	102,000
Jermaine Pennant	Liverpool	19	40,000	101,000
Henri Camara	Wigan	14	24,000	83,000
Julio Arca	Middlesbrough	24	40,000	80,000
Luke Moore	WBA	13	20,000	74,000
Louis Saha	Everton	20	28,000	67,000
Benni McCarthy	Blackburn	30	40,000	64,000
Dwight Yorke	Sunderland	20	24,000	58,000
Jimmy Bullard	Fulham	23	28,000	58,000
Marlon King	Hull City	21	25,000	57,000
Salif Diao	Stoke City	14	16,000	55,000

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The full list of the Premiership’s costliest bench-warmers, and much more can be found at www.imscouting.com.

Marco Pantanella is the Author & Editor of the mCalcio blog.