Manchester City and the FFP Trick That Might Sign Them Their Next Superstar

Earlier this year, Manchester City became one of the first clubs to be punished by UEFA under its newly imposed Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.

Having failed to comply with restrictions over the losses a club could make over the course of three seasons, City were fined £49 million and banned from spending more than that sum in net transfer fees during the 2014 summer transfer window. Their playing squad for this season’s Champions League was also reduced from 25 to just 21 players.

The impact of those restrictions on the performances on the pitch is hard to measure with any great certainty, although it can be safely assumed that it has not helped. City had to produce two magnificent results against Bayern Munich and Roma to scrape through to the knockout stages of the Champions League. In the Premier League, an early-season blip has seen them playing catch-up to pace-setters Chelsea.

"I really do not understand what Financial Fair Play is," City manager Manuel Pellegrini bemoaned to reporters in September, per the Daily Mail, when form in both competitions was underwhelming. "For me, it is impossible.

"This is a club that does not have a pound of debt to anyone. I understand that if you have a big debt you don't pay, you have to be punished, but I do not understand exactly what is Financial Fair Play."Pellegrini may not be alone in his concerns about how Financial Fair Play has been implemented—especially considering the club's owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has an estimated personal worth of almost $5 billion—but the Chilean is in the minority if he truly feels it is not needed in the modern game.

City may be able to sustain their own vast spending, thanks to the wealth of their backers, but artificially limiting those near-unlimited resources evens the playing field slightly for everyone else and retains some of the unpredictability and excitement that is at the heart of football's enduring popularity.

Having been stung by FFP (French champions Paris Saint-Germain were also punished, to a lesser extent, at the same time), City now know better than almost any other club the importance of adhering to those regulations going forward. On the other hand, they also will want to continue to use the advantage of their wealthy benefactors (“oil rich,” as Football Manager might describe them) as much as possible.

Those twin ambitions for City create a new challenge, a new dynamic: staying within the rules of FFP while exploiting them enough to retain an economic advantage over the competition.

How, then, do they go about doing that? Well, judging by the number of players they signed to long-term contract extensions in recent times, it appears they may have already found one way.


Source http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2245934-manchester-city-and-the-ffp-trick-that-might-sign-them-their-next-superstar