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Castrol Performance Analysis shows that 12 out of 20 clubs who spent the most money on new players in Europe’s five major leagues went on to win the title over the last four years.

Real Madrid can justifiably believe they can loosen Barcelona’s grip on the La Liga crown after spending an enormous £229 million during the summer transfer window, a figure that dwarves the expenditure of their rivals in Spain.

And Manchester City have grounds for optimism as they might even topple current champions and city rivals Manchester United this year and clinch their first title in 42 years.

The season’s biggest spenders have become champions in three of the last four seasons in La Liga and France’s Ligue 1.

Manchester City’s £124 million investment in new players makes them the Premier League’s biggest spenders this summer. Castrol Performance Analysis shows that 90 per cent of the top spending clubs in each of Europe’s five major leagues have gone on to finish in the top three over the last four seasons.

Mark Hughes’s spending spree has seen high-profile names like Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Toure and Roque Santa Cruz arrive at the City of Manchester Stadium to join existing stars, including Robinho.

By applying analysis, technology and innovation to football, Castrol Analysts have shown that this level of expenditure should be enough to break open the closed shop at the head of the table where Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal have filled the top four places for the last four years.

City’s expected progress mirrors a trend that runs right through the league table, underlining the link between spending money on new players and eventual league position.

In the Premier League, clubs who maintained or improved their position over the course of the season spent an average of almost £35m on new players while those clubs who found themselves going backwards spent only £30m and that pattern was maintained across the other four major leagues in Europe.

Newly-promoted clubs that managed to survive their first season in the Premier League spent an average of £24 million on players, according to Castrol Performance Analysis.

That’s £9 million more than the average £15 million spent by those clubs that suffered immediate relegation.

And that means that Burnley are the club most likely to make an immediate return to Championship despite their early successes in beating champions Manchester United and Everton, who finished fifth last season. Burnley have spent just £6.9m after ending their 33-year exile from the top-flight.

Castrol Performance Analysts have found that the trend is continued across four of the five major European leagues although overall expenditure is far greater in England.

In Germany, Hoffenheim spent £10.6m last season – three times the average needed to stay up in the Bundesliga – and finished an impressive seventh. And in Italy’s Serie A, Napoli spent £41.4 million when they went up in 2007, helping them to eighth place.

The only league that did not fit the pattern was Spain’s La Liga, where teams that outspent their direct promoted rivals were actually more likely to go back down. In fact, Celta Vigo spent just £890k after winning promotion in 2005 and still managed to finish sixth.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest spenders over the last four seasons have been in the Premier League where clubs have spent an average of around £31 million per year – almost twice the average across the five major leagues.

(Source: Indiantelevision.com)