For well over a decade, Manchester City have been splashing the cash with little worry about the figures adding up, but in 2022 so far, remarkably, they are actually making a net profit on transfer fees.
Since the Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008, the Citizens have spent some 2.25 billion euros on players. On the other side of the coin, they have taken in just 774 million euros in player sales, giving them a net spend of over 1.4 billion.
That gives Manchester City by far and away the highest net transfer spend in world football over the period, with not even Paris Saint-Germain coming close to the levels of spending at the Etihad.
Manchester United, incidentally, are the only other club with a net spend of over one billion euros in the period. Barcelona and Juventus follow PSG, completing the top five.
In 2022 so far, however, counting the winter transfer window from last season and this summer’s window as things stand, City are in the strange position of having a negative net spend, having taken in more than they’ve spent for once.
All this, of course, is assuming that the proposed 59.1 million euro deal to take Raheem Sterling to Chelsea does get completed. The England international had a medical over the weekend and is expected to join his teammates in the USA this week.
Sterling will be the third sale over 50 million this year for City, after Gabriel Jesus and Ferran Torres were sold to Arsenal and Barcelona respectively for similar fees.
The more modest sales of Pedro Porro (Sporting CP) for 8.5 million euros and Ko Itakura (Borussia Monchengladbach) for five million take City’s outgoing receipts to 179.8 million euros.
Even despite the high-profile arrivals of Erling Haaland and Kalvin Phillips, along with Argentine prospect Julian Alvarez, that still leaves the light blues with a positive balance of 54.05 million euros.
Of course, we are still not even halfway through July and you wouldn’t bet against City opening their chequebook again before the end of August. Time will tell, but perhaps, finally, they are managing to find a better balance to their previously unsustainable transfer activity.
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