Premier League clubs paid out £217 million pounds to injured players last season, a 21% increase from last season’s £176m – despite the numbers of injuries falling from 735 to 663.

According to the BBC, Manchester United paid the most in 2017-18 with £23.3m being paid to injured players, while Arsenal suffered the most separate injuries last season with 54.

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At the other end of the scale, Brighton came out on top, suffering only 15 injuries and only paying out £3.01m to injured players.

Manchester City and Newcastle were second equal with only 24 injuries each.

Hamstring injuries were most common, while knee injuries had the highest average cost of £613,402 per injury.

Illness increased by almost 600% with only nine days lost in 2016-17 but rising to 62 days last season.

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Insurance broker JLT Specialty calculated that an injury costs a club an average of £323,000 in wages.

Duncan Fraser, head of sport at JLT, said: “It will be interesting to see what effect, if any, the World Cup has on injury rates in the upcoming season.

“History has shown that teams could expect to see more injuries following an international tournament than during a fallow year.”