According to a survey of football finances, English Premier League clubs are now spending more on wages than ever before.

The revenues of top-flight English clubs topped £1.5billion for the first time in the 2006-07 season, analysts Deloitte have revealed, while the ratio of players' wages to turnover is at its highest level since the league was founded in 1992.

Deloitte reveal that only eight of the 20 Premier League clubs recorded an operating profit in 2006-07, compared with 16 in the previous year.

TOP FIVE PREMIER LEAGUE WAGE BILLS, 2006-07
(2005/6 wages in brackets)

1. Chelsea - £132.8m (£114m)
2. Manchester Utd - £92.3m (£85.4m)
3. Arsenal - £89.7m (£82.9m)
4. Liverpool - £77.6m (£68.9m)
5. Newcastle Utd - £62.4m (£52.2m)

Source: Deloitte

The total wage-bill paid by Premier League clubs increased by 13 per cent from the previous season to £969million, with Reading's bill more than doubling, and Portsmouth and West Ham United spending 49 per cent and 41 per cent more, respectively, on players' wages than a year earlier.

Chelsea had the highest wage bill, totalling £132.8m.

The higher wages partly reflected the new three-year broadcasting deal, worth £1.7billion, which kicked in August last year, and which Deloitte calculate will boost Premier League revenues for the 2007-08 season to around £1.9billion.

"A number of clubs essentially spent some of the money on new players and wages in advance," said one of the Deloitte report's authors, Alan Switzer.

"They knew the broadcast revenue was coming so it was acceptable to do so, but what would be more worrying would be if clubs' wage bills increased even more significantly in coming years."

Switzer described the wages-to-turnover ratio - which rose from 48 per cent in 1996-97 to 62 per cent in 2005-06 and 63 per cent in 2006-07 - as still being at "a sustainable level."

"Wages will have gone beyond £1billion for the season which has just ended. It will be interesting to see what happens next, and how high they will go," adds the report.