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Mails on Man City and money
My God, is there anything more annoying than a City fan playing the “we don’t pay record transfer fees” card??
Yes, Liverpool paid £75m for VVD & City have never paid that much for a defender.
But Gomez, Matip, Phillips and Ben Davies cost £5m COMBINED.
City have:
Laporte who cost £63m.
Stones who cost £50m.
Dias who cost £60m.
Ake who cost £36m.
Eric Garcia who cost £20m.
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Citys bench on Saturday v West Ham was worth over £300m yet City could still start Ederson, Stones, Dias, KDB, Fernandinho, Aguero and Mahrez.
Mendy on the bench cost £50m.
Liverpool’s four full backs of TAA, Williams, Tsimikas and Robertson cost £30m COMBINED.
Yes, you don’t break transfer records but no team on the planet has as many squad players who cost between £30m and £65m.
Ferg, Cork
…The Grudge MCFC decries overly simple explanations of City’s finances while offering up a defence that is at best naive. This new narrative of “forget the billions of unearned income that where poured into the club to make us an elite club we are in fact just better at business than you” is almost admirably one eyed.
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If I had a business that sold cans of warm p!ss and a Saudi Prince poured billions into it and then gave me Tim Cook as a manager it’d be successful.
All City fans (and sadly Winty) twisting and turning and whataboutery cannot separate City’s dominance from the finances. A team that was middling at best does not get to here with sponsorship alone.
Dan
…The Gruge brings up the wages argument but they’re simply not a like for like comparison when you consider the fact that non-playing staff are not included in City’s wage bill but are included in the other clubs’. That can amount to millions, particularly when you think of the executive positions. Then there’s the habit (admitted to by Mancini) of paying wages from entities other than City so that they don’t show up on the FFP books…..maybe that’s why City players are almost never transfer linked to other clubs in the way that the best players elsewhere are?
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Finally, there’s the whole ‘Image Rights’ farrago…
You can read in more detail here (head down to Project Longbow) but the gist of it is that generally around 15% of what clubs pay players is to do with image rights but City sold those rights to a new company they created in 2013 to shift about £10m p.a. off their books meaning that they could both declare an income for the sale and reduce expenses going forward. That new company sold the rights, on the same day, to a Guernsey based Sports Management company but they then agreed to cover any losses that they incurred. So they’re basically continuing to pay image rights to the players but it’s off-book.
You can suggest that they use their money a lot better than everyone else but in reality they’ve circumvented the rules to give themselves an unfair advantage, and that’s before we get into the inflated sponsorship deals from friends and family of the owners that they got away with on a technicality at CAS.
James Outram, Wirral
…Like Gruge, I too did a cursory google regarding teams’ respective salary costs.
The thing I googled was ‘Mancini Salary Man City’. The first link was a well publicised story about how his salary that appeared on City’s books was £1.45m, but he was also paid £1.75m for a consultancy role by Al Jazira Sports and Cultural Club which, shock horror, also appears to belong to the same owners! Imagine what he could have achieved at City if he didn’t dedicate so much time to the cultural club!
Now, that was historic, yes. But it illustrates a point – how much stock do you really put in City’s published numbers?
Apparently, they have just three players who earn more than 150k a week. That’s at Man City, a club with a Facebook following less than a third of the size of United’s and a Twitter following that’s 40% of the size – playing for a less supported club meaning their exposure is smaller and they should, in theory, be less attractive to sponsors.
What the hell is keeping all those world-class players there?
Maybe they’re all happy to be underpaid because they care about the sporting project? Maybe Fernandinho was glued to his TV growing up dreaming of playing under the bright lights of Maine Road, like every little kid growing up in Londrina… maybe ikay Gundogan finds Moonchester the Alien too gosh darn endearing to ask for a pay rise…
The amount United pay some of their players is ridiculous, laughing stock, absolutely. Not the point of this email. The point is, if Mancini’s money was coming from somewhere else, or if the sponsorship money was coming from somewhere else (sorry – time barred, I withdraw the comment) why on earth should anyone believe the salary cost you quote is accurate, or any sort of indicator of their relative success…
Andy (MUFC)
You think it’s just Man City?
Jon and others should probably take a look at themselves and the other large Premier League clubs before continuing a rant against City.
The claim that “no other club” has the commercial deals that City have arranged is easily dismissed by a whole 30 seconds looking at the excellent Swiss Ramble page which helpfully sets out commercial income for dozens of sides. City have a large commercial income, but not wildly different from the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea and still well below United. Then the tiresome trope that these are “dodgy” despite CAS and PwC as well as City’s own auditors concluding these are market value and finding no evidence of any backhanders.
Another valuable 30 seconds of his time could be spent looking at City’s major sponsors, which include Etihad but also those famously Abu Dhabi companies SAP, Marathon, Xylem, Nissan, Wix (Israeli as it happens), Nexen…and wondering whether these (and other) multinationals with a duty to ensure shareholder value are inflating contracts for no commercial reason? Even the Abu Dhabi based sponsors will likely see clear commercial reasons for sponsoring a club with with a extremely high profile in Abu Dhabi and invest in these sponsorship deals accordingly.
The fans of these other teams might look at their own sides’ failures to reach the Champions League on regular occasions, whereas City have been in it every year for a decade. You can’t be instrumental in setting up a tournament to hoard broadcast income (looking at you Liverpool, United, Arsenal) and then whine when a club amasses large amounts of that income by qualifying for it when you failed to do so. You created this self perpetuating money tree, where winning the tournament is less important than qualifying for it – and you have to live with it.
This peculiar selected amnesia around income, ownership and individuals owning/being involved with clubs is also interesting. Liverpool fans wander around town with Standard Chartered on their chests whilst their players, staff and directors happily take the money from an organisation that has had “interesting” attitudes towards funnelling money for oppressive regimes. Similarly United happily hoover up commercial income from the Russian state airline whilst that state climbs steadily up the Human Rights Watch tables. You can’t abdicate responsibility by saying “we only take the money, we’re not owned by them”. Where’s the line? The Standard Chartered deal is £160m, is the line, by any chance, £161m?
Coming back to underhand dealings, by claiming that managers are paid twice he is really struggling when they rely on an accusations concerning one individual – a decade ago – for which the courts found no evidence beyond an email that referred to a consultancy contract which was happily made public at the time and continued beyond Mancini’s time at City.
As others have said, City’s owners (an investment company, not the state) are indeed linked to a regime that has a worryingly dark side – but you can’t pretend they are unique in having close links and indeed significant income from equally morally dubious sources. What City are better at is spending that money – and even making that money available to the manager rather than spiriting it away to hedge fund owners and propping up failing businesses in the US. They are failings unique to those clubs and fans of these clubs are no different to City’s in having little to no influence on who owns these clubs and the beds those owners choose to lie in.
Gav, Edinburgh
My God, is there anything more annoying than a City fan playing the “we don’t pay record transfer fees” card??
Yes, Liverpool paid £75m for VVD & City have never paid that much for a defender.
But Gomez, Matip, Phillips and Ben Davies cost £5m COMBINED.
City have:
Laporte who cost £63m.
Stones who cost £50m.
Dias who cost £60m.
Ake who cost £36m.
Eric Garcia who cost £20m.
ADVERTISEMENT
Citys bench on Saturday v West Ham was worth over £300m yet City could still start Ederson, Stones, Dias, KDB, Fernandinho, Aguero and Mahrez.
Mendy on the bench cost £50m.
Liverpool’s four full backs of TAA, Williams, Tsimikas and Robertson cost £30m COMBINED.
Yes, you don’t break transfer records but no team on the planet has as many squad players who cost between £30m and £65m.
Ferg, Cork
…The Grudge MCFC decries overly simple explanations of City’s finances while offering up a defence that is at best naive. This new narrative of “forget the billions of unearned income that where poured into the club to make us an elite club we are in fact just better at business than you” is almost admirably one eyed.
ADVERTISEMENT
If I had a business that sold cans of warm p!ss and a Saudi Prince poured billions into it and then gave me Tim Cook as a manager it’d be successful.
All City fans (and sadly Winty) twisting and turning and whataboutery cannot separate City’s dominance from the finances. A team that was middling at best does not get to here with sponsorship alone.
Dan
…The Gruge brings up the wages argument but they’re simply not a like for like comparison when you consider the fact that non-playing staff are not included in City’s wage bill but are included in the other clubs’. That can amount to millions, particularly when you think of the executive positions. Then there’s the habit (admitted to by Mancini) of paying wages from entities other than City so that they don’t show up on the FFP books…..maybe that’s why City players are almost never transfer linked to other clubs in the way that the best players elsewhere are?
ADVERTISEMENT
Finally, there’s the whole ‘Image Rights’ farrago…
You can read in more detail here (head down to Project Longbow) but the gist of it is that generally around 15% of what clubs pay players is to do with image rights but City sold those rights to a new company they created in 2013 to shift about £10m p.a. off their books meaning that they could both declare an income for the sale and reduce expenses going forward. That new company sold the rights, on the same day, to a Guernsey based Sports Management company but they then agreed to cover any losses that they incurred. So they’re basically continuing to pay image rights to the players but it’s off-book.
You can suggest that they use their money a lot better than everyone else but in reality they’ve circumvented the rules to give themselves an unfair advantage, and that’s before we get into the inflated sponsorship deals from friends and family of the owners that they got away with on a technicality at CAS.
James Outram, Wirral
…Like Gruge, I too did a cursory google regarding teams’ respective salary costs.
The thing I googled was ‘Mancini Salary Man City’. The first link was a well publicised story about how his salary that appeared on City’s books was £1.45m, but he was also paid £1.75m for a consultancy role by Al Jazira Sports and Cultural Club which, shock horror, also appears to belong to the same owners! Imagine what he could have achieved at City if he didn’t dedicate so much time to the cultural club!
Now, that was historic, yes. But it illustrates a point – how much stock do you really put in City’s published numbers?
Apparently, they have just three players who earn more than 150k a week. That’s at Man City, a club with a Facebook following less than a third of the size of United’s and a Twitter following that’s 40% of the size – playing for a less supported club meaning their exposure is smaller and they should, in theory, be less attractive to sponsors.
What the hell is keeping all those world-class players there?
Maybe they’re all happy to be underpaid because they care about the sporting project? Maybe Fernandinho was glued to his TV growing up dreaming of playing under the bright lights of Maine Road, like every little kid growing up in Londrina… maybe ikay Gundogan finds Moonchester the Alien too gosh darn endearing to ask for a pay rise…
The amount United pay some of their players is ridiculous, laughing stock, absolutely. Not the point of this email. The point is, if Mancini’s money was coming from somewhere else, or if the sponsorship money was coming from somewhere else (sorry – time barred, I withdraw the comment) why on earth should anyone believe the salary cost you quote is accurate, or any sort of indicator of their relative success…
Andy (MUFC)
You think it’s just Man City?
Jon and others should probably take a look at themselves and the other large Premier League clubs before continuing a rant against City.
The claim that “no other club” has the commercial deals that City have arranged is easily dismissed by a whole 30 seconds looking at the excellent Swiss Ramble page which helpfully sets out commercial income for dozens of sides. City have a large commercial income, but not wildly different from the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea and still well below United. Then the tiresome trope that these are “dodgy” despite CAS and PwC as well as City’s own auditors concluding these are market value and finding no evidence of any backhanders.
Another valuable 30 seconds of his time could be spent looking at City’s major sponsors, which include Etihad but also those famously Abu Dhabi companies SAP, Marathon, Xylem, Nissan, Wix (Israeli as it happens), Nexen…and wondering whether these (and other) multinationals with a duty to ensure shareholder value are inflating contracts for no commercial reason? Even the Abu Dhabi based sponsors will likely see clear commercial reasons for sponsoring a club with with a extremely high profile in Abu Dhabi and invest in these sponsorship deals accordingly.
The fans of these other teams might look at their own sides’ failures to reach the Champions League on regular occasions, whereas City have been in it every year for a decade. You can’t be instrumental in setting up a tournament to hoard broadcast income (looking at you Liverpool, United, Arsenal) and then whine when a club amasses large amounts of that income by qualifying for it when you failed to do so. You created this self perpetuating money tree, where winning the tournament is less important than qualifying for it – and you have to live with it.
This peculiar selected amnesia around income, ownership and individuals owning/being involved with clubs is also interesting. Liverpool fans wander around town with Standard Chartered on their chests whilst their players, staff and directors happily take the money from an organisation that has had “interesting” attitudes towards funnelling money for oppressive regimes. Similarly United happily hoover up commercial income from the Russian state airline whilst that state climbs steadily up the Human Rights Watch tables. You can’t abdicate responsibility by saying “we only take the money, we’re not owned by them”. Where’s the line? The Standard Chartered deal is £160m, is the line, by any chance, £161m?
Coming back to underhand dealings, by claiming that managers are paid twice he is really struggling when they rely on an accusations concerning one individual – a decade ago – for which the courts found no evidence beyond an email that referred to a consultancy contract which was happily made public at the time and continued beyond Mancini’s time at City.
As others have said, City’s owners (an investment company, not the state) are indeed linked to a regime that has a worryingly dark side – but you can’t pretend they are unique in having close links and indeed significant income from equally morally dubious sources. What City are better at is spending that money – and even making that money available to the manager rather than spiriting it away to hedge fund owners and propping up failing businesses in the US. They are failings unique to those clubs and fans of these clubs are no different to City’s in having little to no influence on who owns these clubs and the beds those owners choose to lie in.
Gav, Edinburgh
Paul Marin -19 is one thing, 20 is a whole other matter. It gets even worse if they win the UCL. *groan*. 
05/18/2011.MU fans naah cough, but all a unuh a vomit?-Lazie 1/11/2015
………….and I likes Chelsea !...……………...
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