Adebayor is reportedly stalling over the prospect of taking a £3 million wage cut to join Tottenham Hotspurs. We saw a similar case with Wayne Bridge who, despite being loaned to Brighton, is still earning a huge salary at City which is he unlikely to give up until his contract expires. This will likely become a recurring theme for City who will need to shift players if they are to bring in new stars and comply with the FFP regulations.
Who City may want to move on
Including Adebayor and Santa Cruz the club have 6 forwards and if they want to sign Robin Van Persie will realistically need to move on at least three forwards. The problem is that the players, no matter how good, will not get similar wages elsewhere except perhaps at PSG or in a far away league like China. This was a major stumbling block for AC Milan when they tried to bring Carlos Tevez to the club as they could not afford both a transfer fee and to match his huge wages. Depending on the character of the involved player, many of them will be happy to earn large sums and not play in the same way Bridge was.
Clearly the club want rid of Bridge who is effectively running down his contract out on loan, having last appeared for the club in the 09-10 season where he made only 3 appearances. Santa Cruz is another forgotten man at the club having cost £17.5 million pounds. Santa Cruz only managed 3 goals for the club before having several loan spells elsewhere. Most recently he was loaned to an Argentinean side, who would almost certainly get nowhere near to matching what he currently earns. The most vulnerable forwards are thus Adebayor, Santa Cruz and Dzeko. A further issue for City may be that a player like Balotelli may not want to be the fourth choice striker if RVP is signed.
As noted City will have to sell to bring players in or risk inflating their wage bill further. Kolo Toure and Nigel de Jong could both be vulnerable. Toure is reportedly getting close to a move to Turkey whilst nothing has been mentioned over de Jong’s future. Toure is by no means a bad player but it seems unlikely that he’d get anything close to what he earns playing in Turkey which could disuade him from making a move. The club could surely not bring in another central midfielder if he is still there with six players capable of playing there as things stand. Younger stars Boyata, Michael Johnson and Weiss may also be moved on, not for wage reasons but to clear up space in the first team squad.
The worry for City is that they may get caught up in deals where players leave but still have portions of their contract paid by the club. This is something that could certainly materialize with Adebayor. Such a move would not be uncommon; when Raul moved to Shalke from Madrid the club subsidized his salary so that he did not take such a big wage cut. If City pay, say, £70,000 a week of Adebayor’s new deal it is certainly better than them shelling out £170,000 for a player who is in the reserves and not even in the manager’s first team plans. City could thus find themselves subsidising other sides purchases of their back-up players which is by no means an ideal solution for the club.
Conclusion
With several managerial changes and a huge influx of money City have stockpiled a large number of players over recent years, many of whom are way past their peak and on big wages. As a result of this the club are lumbered with players they do not want and who do not want to take wage cuts by moving elsewhere. Players know that if the FFP comes into effect they will never get such a huge salary again, especially players like Bridge or Santa Cruz who are by no means top players. It’s not realistic for the club to let players rot in the reserves on high wages and thus they do need to move them on which could lead to City subsidizing their players wages elsewhere.
If the club want to sign they will have to sell. City are widely reported to be in for a striker, which honestly is not massively necessary, as last season’s four strikers all performed well. Dzeko as stated could be vulnerable to sale which is arguably unfair for a player who had a 1 in 2 goal scoring record in the Premier League last season. If the club do sign Robin Van Persie then Balotelli would arguably become the clubs fourth choice striker, but is this a role he’d be prepared to play? Mancini will have some serious selection dilemmas ahead next season as the club continue to be linked with some of the worlds most sought after players.
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‘Think Football’ indeed. You would’ve thought that someone would have researched FFP and discovered that neither Adebayor, Bridge, Santa Cruz (or Tevez for that matter) have their wages included in the FFP calculations for Man City. They were signed before FFP was drafted, as such FFP has a clause that discounts players signed before a certain date. I am sure City would prefer to get these players off the wage bill but it will not affect them in terms of FFP one bit.
I’m not sure thats true, if you could show me a credible source that states that I’d be grateful. It takes into account revenue versus costs- and costs are any wages- nowhere have I read that players signed before are discounted.
Amit, the credible source would be the FFP Regulations themselves. I suspect like many journalists you have not read them? Annex XI, section 2, is specifically in relation to ‘players signed prior to June 2010′ and outlines that so long as there is a positive trend in the accounts players signed before this date can ‘most likely’ be discounted for the prurposes of FFP calculations.
Yeah, most of my research was done via articles in ‘leading” papers so I lazily did not read the rules themselves. -’ll ammend that part of thee article. Apologies
Here’s a link for that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Financial_Fair_Play_Regulations#Potential_loopholes
I’d researched this before and never came across it, the article used to link the wiki page is also not properly referenced so I’m still some what sceptical
y are u assuming that balotelli will b 4th choice wen barring aguero he is the best striker at the club?i blame mark hughes because these players were never good enough 4d salaries they got when they joined.they should b offered to russia who can afford the wages.on the playing side johnson weiss boyata shoulkd stay cuz they can perform as well as their wages are small.