FPL 2022/23 team reviews: Man City

No, even without signing on fees for player and agent, Haaland's wages are around 900k pw and then your next lowest is KDB at 400k. The policy of a small squad with a high concentration of quality allows for these wages, but they are sky-high nevertheless.

Oh with bonuses and such. Hard to find accurate info on this sort of thing, I tend not to trust figures reported in tabloids. It does seem he gets a wedge for goals, so he'll be sitting pretty on that front.

I can imagine the other top players in the league have big performance relates boosts in their contracts also, again standard practise these days. Maybe his exceed them, I'm not sure. Presume the bonuses are included in overall annual salaries reported for clubs?

My understanding is that the weekly wages of 900k, although heavily bonus-driven, were quoted before he started smashing goals in, i.e. they are sort of "guaranteed" bonuses and effectively an under the table payment. Which is problematic for providing accurate accounting information but I guess we wait and see if that goes anywhere.

Salary makes up such a small fraction of player pay now anyway - advertising revenue dwarfs it.

Salah's contract was leaked and the bonuses took it from 350k basic to just short of 400k. In terms of bonuses as a % of salary, I think Haaland is an exceptional case*.

*In England anyway - Mbappe is comparable otherwise.

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

I hope Darwin wasn't banking on a hefty goal bonus.

Thanks for the long and detailed reply. You have put forward some good arguments but I'll tell you where I was coming from when I originally made my throwaway comment "It's easy to have a low net spend though when you have already assembled a squad of young superstars and you blow everyone else out of the water wages-wise!"

I think you took the statement about the wages quite literally. I didn't state it but I was referring to the Haaland transfer. As I said it was more of a throwaway comment and I probably should have phrased it like "and City can blow everyone out of the water wage-wise when they need to".

The tabloid wage estimates have KDB ahead of Haaland so they mustn't be including bonuses.

Regarding FFP, there have to be some sort of rules on this to keep football competitive. Otherwise the next few years would be an out and out arms race between Newcastle, City and United, if taken over. It has the potential to completely ruin football. I know some people say it's been ruined already! That's not to mention the effect FFP has on the lower leagues to stop clubs from overreaching.

The rules are in place so clubs should stick to them. Are they perfect? No, but there are some rules needed. I find it baffling that City can have the highest revenue in world football given the size of their fanbase and the fact they don't even sell out home games.

It amuses to me to hear City fans bring up net spend. Liverpool fans have been making this (valid) argument for years and have been ridiculed by other fans- especially City fans! City fans are now using it when it suits them. As usual with this kind of thing, a timeframe is chosen to fit a narrative. Why not go back 6, 7, 8 years? It's probably relevant considering some of their current players were signed back then.

City were top of the net spend rankings for years which has put them in a strong position in the transfer market. IMO they bought this and didn't earn it.

When Pep goes, if things start to decline, I fully expect the cheque book to be out again. The big difference is this time City will have some real competition from Newcastle and possibly United. If Newcastle go down the creative accounting route that City have, City fans could be calling for FFP rules to be enforced!

I think bringing up the Liverpool "hacking" issue is clutching at straws. Is that the worst thing you can say about Liverpool? Three employees from the City scouting department switched jobs to a competitor and they failed to remove their access to the City scouting database.

I'm not trying to take the moral high ground or have a holier than thou attitude, I am genuinely bitter! In any other era, Liverpool would have won 4 or 5 league titles in the last 10 years but only have 1. City are the best team the EPL has ever seen and I think that they cheated to achieve this. As you said, this will all come out in the wash but I doubt they are going retrospectively award titles to other clubs.

I stand by the sentiment of my original statement!

Thanks also for yours.

That's the point though, they do it when they need to because of good governance. If they spunked money by overpaying for transfer fees and wages generally as some other top clubs do, they wouldn't be able to. One transfer can be looked at in isolation, but it's the total wage and net transfer that are really relevant, and these show City are not blowing the other top teams out of the water. It's a well run club from top to bottom and a lot of other fans don't like that so misrepresent it in arguments. City wouldn't have been successful as they have been without the money, I'm not daft enough to deny that. But there are so many other factors they have got right that other clubs don't despite having plenty of financial weight, that's the real differentiator. Of course like you say, that could change quickly. Look at what happened when Ferguson left the rags. I'm more hopeful though for when Pep leaves because of how good the infrastructure is in terms of youth development, scouting network, coaching strategy, local investment in area etc.

Regarding Liverpool, this was centric to them, that was just another example of dodgy practise that people tend to sweep up the carpet but happy to jump on

Let's see what happens with FFP rulings, you seem to prefer to bypass due process and draw conclusions in advance. If they are found guilty (and what off and in what period), you will have a stronger argument for your sentiment.

I agree there has to be some sort of FFP, ideally a transfer and salary cap but that ship sailed long ago. Leicester are a massive fluke exception but it's the same teams competing because they were successful either and/or in terms of on the pitch or cashing in on their previous history at the right time when real money came into the game. After that it almost became a closed shop and these teams always put self-interest first and campaigned in every way possible to protect that and stop disruption. Is that good for the game? I'd much prefer it wasn't foreign investment, nation state involvement etc. but as it's not a level playing field to start with, that is the only way to compete and establish a genuine challenge.

City are self sufficient now. I'm not sure why you're surprised about City's success in revenue streams. I don't feel daft claiming to be the best team in the world as it stands, sponsors like that sort of thing. It's not do with fanbase size, ticket sales make up a tiny proportion of revenue.

Besides, that's another lazy trope oft trotted out. There's a season ticket waiting list at City and average attendance shows pretty much a sell out every league game, as does eye test. I know because I'm at them all. One criticism I agree with is some fans leave to soon, I don't like that and have to take that one on the chin but I also suspect it's that at these times people pushing the low attendance myth like to take the happy snaps to deliberately misrepresent the actual attendances.

It's also funny how many of the same fans calling City fans plastics also like to throw the Emptyhad nonsense about. They can't have it both ways. As with any successful club, there is certainly an element of football tourism, day trippers and plastic fans (otherwise there wouldn't be blokes flogging half and half scarves outside every week!), but younger generations aside, the bulk (30-40K) are still the same hardcore fans that were watching City in the old 3rd division where we would often get 30K. I was at Wembley for the FA Cup final and Istanbul for the CL final, I was also at Wembley to see us get promoted in play-offs against Gillingham in 99, Many of me friends who still go also were. There's plenty of other PL clubs whose fans deserted them when they fell on harder times.