The English Premier League is not the 'best' league in world football anymore - the statistics don't lie.

Jose Mourinho's Chelsea may be one of the strongest team's since the league's incarnation but this is not a vintage year. It's still an incredibly popular league all around the globe, and us English folk cannot get enough of it. But thanks to research by Twitter account @sportingintel, there are some interesting statistics to perhaps put to bed the fallacy that the Premier League is the be-all and end-all in football.

Firstly, largely due to the average income of the teams in the Premier League being considerably larger than any of the others, the average player wage per week is £15,000 higher than the nearest rival, the Bundesliga.

Top 5 average salaries in the world's major football leagues.

1 - Premier League (England) - £43,717

2 - Bundesliga (Germany) - £28,011

3 - Serie A (Italy) - £25,263

4 - La Liga (Spain) - £23,327

5 - Ligue 1 (France) - £18,999

No surprises that the top 5 are all in Europe as the continent continues to dominate. It's still the place to be for players of all nationalities, and that'll stay the case while that's where the money remains. The gap between the rest of the leagues is around £2,000, yet the Premier League is far-reaching outlier. Of course money doesn't equal entertainment, but to afford these wages the Premier League needs a greater ticket price.

Ticket prices: value for money in the world's major leagues.

In value for money terms, Algeria tops the table where for one weeks income (£166) a fan could afford 118 match tickets at £1.40 each. Unsurprisingly the lesser leagues dominate this category despite the far greater average weekly wage in England.

The Eredivisie is the 9th best for ticket prices with an average of 49 tickets being affordable from one weeks wage. The Bundesliga comes in at 27.3 tickets per weekly wage, before Serie A and La Liga, 22 and 20 respectively. The Premier League is only ahead of Brazil and China with an average ticket price of £28.80 (the highest - of course), and an average weekly wage of £411 (lower than Switzerland, Sweden, Holland, Australia, Norway, Austria, Denmark, France, Belgium, USA, Germany, Japan). English football supporters of a Premier League team are somewhat being taken for a ride.

Yet of course there's no concern about this for the people at the very top, as despite an increasing amount of Premier League games screened live, attendances are very much as high as ever before.

Highest attendances in the world's major leagues.

Per game (total)

1 - Bundesliga (Germany) - 42,609 (13,038,354)

2 - Premier League (England) - 36,695 (13,944,100)

3 - La Liga (Spain) - 26,955 (10,242,900)

4 - Serie A (Italy) - 23,385 (8,886,300)

5 - Liga MX (Mexico) - 22,271 (6,814,926)

There's clearly no need to panic for the Premier League bosses. Supporters are still turning up in their droves to watch what many of us consider the best league in the world, and it may well be for entertainment. Perhaps we've managed to convince ourselves with the fallacy that we - or perhaps more accurately, Sky Sports - have created. One thing is for sure, the supporters of Premier League teams will never ditch their clubs -and that's how it should be - but the businessman in charge know that too.

So if the Premier League is so entertaining to watch that even tourists will flock to Old Trafford to catch a true English game, how does it shape up to others in terms of the most entertaining part of a match - goals.

Goals, goals, goals: The leagues where you'll find the most per game.

The objective of scoring is the essence of any sport, and a game of football without a goal is largely unsatisfying. So where should we all flock to in order to increase our chances of seeing plenty of goals?

1 - Bundesliga (Austria) - 3.31

2 - Eredivisie (Holland) - 3.20

3 - Bundesliga (Germany) - 3.16

4 - Allsvenskan (Sweden) - 2.93

5 - Tippeligaen (Norway) - 2.89

The English Premier League is nowhere to be seen in the top 5, and that could be for a whole host of reasons. Out of the top 34 major leagues in the world, the Premier League ranks in 10th for the average goals per game (2.77), behind Major League Soccer (USA - 2.86) but ahead of La Liga (2.75) and 23 others.

Of course when it's put into a goals per game ratio, the differences are marginal but it's another fact that goes against the Premier League. Perhaps it's time to admit that football isn't all about 'our' league and that 'our' league isn't really 'our' league at all.

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