Which clubs have the longest contracts

Athletic Bilbao, at 5.01 years across the 21 players in their squad whose deal is still running. Chelsea are second on 4.27 and Manchester City third on 3.87. The average across all 94 big-five clubs is 2.71 years.

Elche, at 1.51 years. 58% of their wage bill — £108,324 a week — is on a deal that ends when 2026/27 does. The heaviest single-summer exposure belongs to Angers SCO, with 61% of the payroll running out.

Every player in the squad is weighted by what he earns, so a club's figure is the average length of a pound of its wage bill rather than the average length of a contract. Squads here run from 16 players to 82 — the source carries full English academies and little of Spain's — and weighting by wage is what makes those two comparable. Length is measured from the first day of 2026/27, not from the day the page was built, so the figures do not drift between builds.

£19,699,435 a week across the big five, which is 22% of the £90,265,337 a week those squads earn between them, and £1,024,370,620 across a full year. Serie A has the largest share running out.

It sets how much of a squad a club can change and how much leverage it has when it does. A player entering the last year of a deal can be sold cheaply or leave for nothing a year later, so a short book forces a club to sell, renew or lose. A long one costs more to unwind — the wage is owed either way — but nothing walks out of the door unpaid for.

The 2,878 players in big-five squads who carry a wage and a contract date still running in 2026/27. A further 889 carry a date that has already passed, which is a deal the source never refreshed rather than a contract with no time left on it, and they are left out of the averages. Clubs with fewer than 12 priced players are not ranked, which excludes 2 clubs.