Arsenal, Manchester City, and Manchester United all pay their average female staff more than avergae male members of staff but they are in the minority when it comes to football clubs.

Companies across the UK with more than 250 staff have until midnight on Thursday to submit their gender pay figures and with the majority of Britain’s 9,000 companies required to file having done so already, the results are not good.

Just under 80% of companies have men who earn more than women based on the median average.

At Arsenal, however, the average man is paid 2.5% less than the average woman. These figures clearly do not cover the not-so-average playing staff. Women, however, only make up 29% of the higher paid jobs at Arsenal and just 27% of the lower paid.

Only 14% of companies pay their average women more than their average men, and Arsenal are one of them.

At Manchester City, the gap is even bigger. There is a 17.2% gap in favour of women at a time when the UK average is 18.4% in favour of men.

Manchester United pay the average man 7.9% less than the average women.

Those three, however, are outliers in a male-dominated industry.

At Tottenham, the average woman is paid 3% less than the average man. No figures were available at the time of writing for Liverpool, while Chelsea reported no gender pay gap.

What is the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap and equal pay are not the same thing.

Equal pay refers to paying people the same amount for doing the same job.

The gender pay gap addresses the issue that sees lower-paid jobs go to women more often while men take up bigger percentage of the higher paying jobs.

It has been a legal requirement for 47 years to pay all people the same amount for the same job regardless of gender but there are no laws governing the gender pay gap.

An example might be a supermarket where a female executive is paid the same amount as male executives (thus meeting their equal pay obligations), but men make up 90% of the highly-remunerated board positions while women make up 90% of the shop staff earning minimum wage.