Man City, United reign supreme

LONDON. — Manchester City and Manchester United reigned supreme at the top of the table for highest valued squads, with both worth more than £1billion, in a report by the CIES Football Observatory.

It should come as no surprise to see the two English Premier League power-players leading the rankings given their investment and transfer dealings in recent seasons.

City — who splashed out £100m on Jack Grealish this summer — had an estimated squad worth of £1.28billion.

Pep Guardiola’s side edged narrowly above their local rivals Manchester United, who had a very busy window indeed and sprinkled some serious talent around their already expensive squad. Cristiano Ronaldo is still worth around £20m after joining from Juventus, while the club also snapped up Real Madrid centre-back Raphael Varane for £42m and Dortmund star Jadon Sancho for roughly £73m.

In total, United’s squad was worth around £1.21bn as their new signings joined other big name players like Paul Pogba, Marcus Rashford and most expensive defender in the world Harry Maguire. But it wasn’t enough to dethrone the reigning Premier League champions City, who have slowly assembled a team brimming with top talent, including Kevin de Bruyne, Ruben Dias, Raheem Sterling and Ilkay Gundogan. Rounding off the podium of the CIES report was Chelsea, who have been investing heavily in their squad themselves - having brought in Inter Milan striker Romelu Lukaku from Inter Milan for an eye-watering £98m.

The Champions League winners are valued at around £808m, which puts them just above European heavyweights Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

Barcelona retain a relatively high position of fourth despite losing star man Lionel Messi to PSG this summer and are worth around £764m and the German giants, spearheaded by forward Roberto Lewandowski, are valued at £759m. Four teams make up the top ten, with Liverpool in sixth place with an estimated squad value of £741m. — Mailonline.