Forbes business magazine has placed Manchester United at the top of the wealthy clubs pile (740m), with Arsenal (466m) in 3rd spot and Chelsea (274m) way back in 8th place.

This is current for the season ending 2005-2006.

25 most valuable clubs (Europe)

1 Man Utd £740m

2 Real Madrid £528m

3 Arsenal £466m

4 Bayern Munich £427m

5 AC Milan £420m

6 Juventus £289m

7 Inter Milan £282m

8 Chelsea £274m

9 Barcelona £273m

10 Schalke 04 £240m

11 Liverpool £231m

12 Lyon £175m

13 Newcastle £132m

14 Tottenham £124m

15 Roma £114m

16 Hamburg £112m

17 Man City £106m

18 B Dortmund £101m

19 Ajax £100m

20 Celtic £94m

21 Everton £84m

22 Marseille £80m

23 West Ham £79m

24 Rangers £75m

25 Aston Villa £71m

Highest-Paid Players (Europe)

Note that Beckham’s move to MLS side LA Galaxy has not been taken into account.

1 Ronaldinho (Barcelona) £15.2m

2 David Beckham (Real Madrid) £14.8m

3 Ronaldo (AC Milan) £11.7m

4 Wayne Rooney (Man Utd) £8.7m

5 Michael Ballack (Chelsea) £8.7m

6 Thierry Henry (Arsenal) £8.2m

7 Zinedine Zidane (ex-Real Madrid) £8.2m

8 Fabio Cannavaro (Real Madrid) £7.6m

9 John Terry (Chelsea) £7.1m

10 Steven Gerrard (Liverpool) £7.1m

(Source: Forbes.com – thanks to Ed Harrison for the link)