Manchester City's squad cost ratio: a large cost base, on the line before a single sale

Corrections, 1 and 2 October 2026. The ratio is 74.1%, from 75.4%, and 86.2% before player trading, from 87.7%. Agents’ fees now use the FA’s published figure for City, £37.4m rather than an assumed £52m. Enzo Fernández’s fee from Chelsea is taken at £125m on both sides of the transfer, and the summer 2026 window’s annual charge is restated as £90.7m, the engine’s figure. Nico González’s contract ran four and a half years and Savinho’s five; Ederson’s and John Stones’s 2021 extensions are recorded; Ederson’s sale is taken at the £11.3m base; Máximo Perrone’s cost is the reported £8.0m total; and Stefan Ortega left on a free transfer. The squad cost is £611.0m and the three-year average of sale profit £115.0m. City now need about £10m a year of sale profit to reach 85%, against £23m before. Green headroom is £89.4m, the range 69.9% to 78.6% and the stress case 85.9%. The share of each fee that became profit runs from 30% to 95%, and Rodri and González, about £3m apart in price, are about £30m apart in profit. The conclusion does not change: City are above the threshold before player trading and inside it after.

Correction, 26 September 2026. The ratio is 75.4%, from 79.1%, and 87.7% before player trading, from 92.0%. Three registrations signed in June 2025, Rayan Aït-Nouri, Rayan Cherki and Tijjani Reijnders, sit inside the book value filed at 30 June 2025, as the club’s own accounts confirm; each is now charged once, and Reijnders’s cost leaves with his sale. Amortisation is £256.5m, green headroom £79.1m, the range 71.1% to 79.9%, and the stress case 87.5%.

Correction, 25 September 2026. The ratio is 79.1%, from 78.9%, and 92.0% before player trading, from 92.1%. City’s departure record was rebuilt from the clubs’ own announcements. Kyle Walker’s sale to Burnley in July 2025 had been missing. Manuel Akanji’s sale belongs in 2025/26, because Inter’s purchase obligation became unconditional when they won Serie A on 3 May 2026, and so does Jahmai Simpson-Pusey’s, which Köln completed on 12 June. Rodri’s fee is now the €60m fixed element, £51.3m, and Savinho’s contract extension of October 2025 is now recorded. Twenty-one placeholder dates were replaced and five academy sales were added. The table of the largest disposals now includes Máximo Perrone’s £13.0m sale to Como, which had been left out. Two academy sales are now taken at the fees guaranteed at signing rather than figures that included add-ons: James McAtee’s move to Nottingham Forest at £22m, not £25m (the deal rises to £30m only with add-ons; £25m was Forest’s rejected opening bid), and Reigan Heskey’s move to Köln at £2.1m, not about £7m (rising to £6.8m with add-ons). Profit on player sales is £95.9m for 2025/26 and £155.6m for 2026/27, and the three-year average is £115.6m, from £117.9m. Green headroom is £48.6m, the range 74.7% to 83.8%, the stress case 91.8%, and 4.6% of modelled outcomes land above 85%.

Correction, 23 September 2026. The ratio is 78.9% and 92.1% before player trading, from 79.3% and 92.8%, after a contract-date sweep found two missing extensions: Rodri’s three-year extension of July 2022 and Nathan Aké’s two-year prolongation of July 2023. Both predate the 12 December 2023 cut-off, so neither brings a cap, but each leaves book value at a sale the model had treated as fully written down. An update on 20 September had revised the ratio from 82.1% after the players’ wage share was widened and four transfer fees were taken to their base amounts. The conclusion is unchanged.

Correction, 3 October 2026. The ratio is 74.2%, from 74.1%, and 86.3% before player trading, from 86.2%. Counted, from archived match reports. The rule counts the average number of home FA Cup and League Cup matches over the last three seasons, rounded up. City played ten (two, three and five), so the rule counts four, where we had assumed three. The rule divides last season’s receipts by last season’s home matches. City played 29 (19 league, five cup and five European), where we had assumed 27. Re-estimated, by our method. Last season’s matchday receipts are not yet filed. We had carried £78.0m; the estimate is now £80.0m: the filed 2024/25 figure of £75.1m, scaled for the change in home matches (cup ties from 3 to 5), with a cup tie counted as 0.15 of a league match and a European match as 0.25, plus 5% for the year. The method, and how far it could be out, is set out in How we estimate matchday revenue. Matchday revenue under the rule is £74.5m, from £75.1m. City’s website does not allow automated access, so their matches are evidenced from published match reports. Also moved: the range is 69.9 to 78.7%, from 69.9 to 78.6%; green headroom is £88.9m, from £89.4m; and the stress case is 86.0%, from 85.9%. A separate review of agents’ fees on signings since the last accounts is under way and may raise this figure; we will report its result.

Correction, 4 October 2026. The ratio is 76.1%, from 74.2%, and 88.1% before player trading, from 86.3%. The squad cost rule defines three things in its own terms, and in each we had used the figure from a club’s accounts (Three definitions in the squad cost rule, and what they change). What a registration costs. The rule counts everything a club pays in connection with a transfer: the fee, the League’s 4% transfer levy and agents’ fees. For players signed since City’s last accounts we now count the reported fee plus 12%. Squad cost is £619.2m, from £611.0m, and the three-year average of sale profit is £110.3m, from £115.0m, because a player sold now leaves at a higher book value. This is the result of the review of agents’ fees that our earlier notes promised. Merchandise. The rule counts merchandise at gross profit, sales less the cost of the goods, where we had counted sales in full. City’s shops are run by a partner, so its accounts already hold merchandise net and nothing is taken off. Cup prize money. The rule counts a three-year average of what a club received from the FA Cup and the EFL Cup. We had entered £9.0m for City, a figure with no calculation behind it. Rebuilt from City’s cup ties in the last three seasons and the FA’s published prize fund and broadcast fees, it is £3.8m, in a range of £3.6m to £11.0m. The figure is provisional: the EFL publishes no prize money, some broadcast fees are not published, and the top of the range allows for a share of the gate at away ties, which the rule may or may not count. The revenue the rule counts is £703.1m, from £708.3m. Also moved: the range is 71.6 to 80.6%, from 69.9 to 78.7%; green headroom is £72.2m, from £88.9m; the stress case is 87.9%, from 86.0%.

Correction, 5 October 2026. The ratio is unchanged at 76.1%, and 88.0% before player trading, from 88.1%. Two changes offset each other. We now measure each contract from the day the player was registered to the day it ends. A player who signs in August on a five-year deal has a contract of four years and ten months, because contracts end on 30 June; we had spread his cost over five full years. 39 of Manchester City’s contract lengths change, 31 of them against an end date we have derived as the 30 June the announced length points to, where no source states the date. The yearly charge for registrations is £266.5m, from £263.9m. On the contract change alone the ratio would be 76.4%. We now count the women’s team’s ticket and broadcasting revenue. The rule tests a club together with its football companies. The women’s team is in another company of City Football Group, outside the accounts we read. We add its ticket and broadcasting revenue, £3.7m in 2024/25, which agrees with the group’s own published UK figures. We do not add its sponsorship income, £6.9m, because the accounts do not show that it comes from outside the group. What the group’s marketing and services companies charge the club is not published, so the group basis cannot be completed from public accounts. The revenue the rule counts is £706.8m, from £703.1m. The range is 71.6% to 80.5%, from 71.6% to 80.6%. No threshold is crossed. Most clubs move because contract costs are now measured to their actual or derived expiry dates; six also move for club-specific reasons. See the engine changelog.

Correction, 7 October 2026. The ratio is 75.7%, from 76.1%, and 87.5% before player trading, from 88.0%. The three-year average of UEFA prize money is now built from its three seasons, two filed and one estimated: £84.4m, where we had used a round £80.0m. The filed figure for 2023/24 may include the UEFA Super Cup, which the rule treats separately; the accounts do not split it. Elliot Anderson’s signing is dated 23 July 2026. This article also said the League’s squad list of 12 September 2025 still listed Kayky after his sale to Bahia. It does not: our copy of that list had been transcribed with errors, which we found by checking every club’s copy against the League’s pages. Two of City’s four lists and one of Fulham’s were wrong and are corrected. No estimate moves on that account.

Correction, 7 October 2026, second correction of the day. The ratio is 75.4%, from 75.7%, and 87.1% before player trading, from 87.5%. We had counted four European home matches; the rule counts five. The rule adds gate income for a club’s European home matches at the higher of two figures: the home matches it is guaranteed this season, and the average it played at home in the same competition over the last three seasons, rounded up. We had applied only the first. City played five Champions League home matches in each of the last three seasons, where we had four. The European home gate is £13.8m, from £11.0m: five matches, where we had four, at last season’s estimated receipts of about £2.8m a home match. The revenue the rule counts is £714.0m, from £711.3m. We read “the relevant UEFA Club Competition” as the one the club is in this season (how we count matchday revenue). The range is 71.0% to 79.8%, from 71.2% to 80.1%. No threshold is crossed. See the engine changelog.

Correction, 9 October 2026. The ratio is 73.8%, from 75.4%, and 84.9% before player trading, from 87.1%. Last season’s commercial revenue is now estimated by one published method, the same for every club. City’s 2025/26 accounts are not filed, so the figure is an estimate. We had £348.7m. The earlier figure was a judgement of ours and is withdrawn. It is now £367.6m: the £340.4m filed for 2024/25, grown by 6.9%, the rate the method gives a commercial income of that size, plus £3.7m for the women’s team, added as before (how we estimate last season’s commercial revenue). It is drawn between £308.4m and £419.7m, where we had drawn 7% either way: the new span comes from how far forecasts of this kind have missed in past seasons. The range is 69.1% to 78.9%, from 71.0% to 79.8%. Before player trading City are only 0.1 percentage points below the 85% line, a margin smaller than the uncertainty in our estimate of last season’s commercial revenue: the figure does not reliably tell whether City are inside the line before a sale is counted. The figure before player trading is now below 85%; it was above. This article said City were above the 85% threshold before player trading and needed about £18m a year of profit on player sales to reach it; it now says the central figure before player trading is 84.9%, 0.1 percentage points below the line, which does not reliably tell which side City are on, and that on the central figure City need no sale profit to reach 85%. The stress case is now described as what it is: the worst case on costs alone, with revenue held at the central estimate. See the engine changelog.

Clarification, 15 October 2026. Wording only; no figure changed. The ranges in this article are assumption ranges, the spread of the model’s inputs between assumed bounds, not calibrated or confidence intervals, and the shares of modelled outcomes above or below a threshold quoted in the notes above are withdrawn.

Updated 16 October 2026: loans out now recorded; wage relief shown in ranges. The central figure is unchanged at 73.8%. Manchester City’s players out on loan are now recorded. Nobody has said how much of their wages the borrowing clubs pay, so the possible saving widens the assumption range rather than moving the central figure: the range is 67.6% to 77.9%, from 69.1% to 78.9%, still wholly below 85%. The stress case, the worst case on costs alone, is 86.2%, from 85.1%. See the engine changelog.

Correction, 23 October 2026. This article estimated Manchester City’s ratio at 73.8%; the corrected figure is 73.1%, and 84.9% before player trading is unchanged. We had missed about £23.1m of profit on player sales. The rule averages the profit or loss on sales in the six most recent transfer windows (Rules A.1.13 and A.1.53), and for the March 2027 test that period starts on 2 February 2024. We had averaged three financial years starting on 1 July 2024, so Taylor Harwood-Bellis’s move to Southampton and Tommy Doyle’s to Wolves were left out. Both were registered on 1 July 2024, but neither appears among the sales after the year end in City’s 2023/24 accounts, so we take them as booked in that year; on either date they fall inside the period. Nothing in City’s own figures changed; the error was in how we read the rule.

• Moved: the three-year average of sale profit is £118.4m, from £110.7m, worth 11.8 percentage points, from 11.1. Green headroom is £101.4m, from £94.9m. The range is 67.1% to 77.2%, from 67.6% to 77.9%. The stress case is 85.4%, from 86.2%.
• The conclusion holds: City are inside the line, and before player trading the cost base is still 0.1 percentage points below it. The twenty clubs together come to 74.9%, from 75.6%. The lead chart and the cover are redrawn with these figures. See the engine changelog.

Correction, 23 October 2026 (second of the day). This article estimated Manchester City’s ratio at 73.1%; the corrected figure is 73.7%, and 85.6% before player trading, from 84.9%. We had not applied the rule’s five-year cap to contracts already on the books. Rule A.1.22(c) spreads a transfer fee over the contract “capped at an amortisation length of five years”, and only a contract executed before 12 December 2023 may run longer. We applied the cap to signings since the last accounts but charged the registrations already in the filed book value as City’s own accounts do, over the full contract. Six of them were signed or extended since December 2023 for more than five years, Erling Haaland’s extension to 2034 the largest, and together they add £5.2m to this season’s amortisation, now £272.0m. Nothing in City’s own figures changed.

• Moved: before player trading City are now 0.6 percentage points above the 85% line, where they were 0.1 below; either way the margin is smaller than the uncertainty in our estimate of last season’s commercial revenue, so the estimate still cannot tell which side of the line City are on before a sale is counted. On the central figure City need £5.2m a year of sale profit to reach 85%, where they needed none. Green headroom is £96.3m, from £101.4m. The range is 67.7% to 77.8%, from 67.1% to 77.2%; the stress case is 86.0%, from 85.4%.
• The conclusion holds: City are inside the line, and their £118.4m average of sale profit covers what they need many times over. The lead chart and the cover are redrawn. See the engine changelog.
• Also corrected: a summary line near the top still gave the squad cost as £622m, with £267m of amortisation; they are £627m and £272m, as in the rest of the article.

Correction, 25 October 2026. The ratio is unchanged. The description, the cover text and the opening said City sold sixteen registrations in 2026 and that the share of each fee that became profit ran from 23% to 95%. The range comes from the table of the twelve largest disposals of the past two seasons, which includes sales of 2025; City’s own announcements give thirteen sales for a fee in calendar 2026. The three sentences now describe the table the range comes from. Omar Marmoush’s annual charge, which City keep while he is on loan at Tottenham, is £13.2m, from £11.8m: his £59m fee plus 12% for the costs of a transfer, over the five years the cap allows, the basis every registration in the series is charged on and the figure Tottenham’s article gives.

Correction, 26 October 2026. The ratio is 74.4%, from 73.7%, and 86.4% before player trading, from 85.6%: 1.4 percentage points above the 85% line, from 0.6, still too close for the estimate to say which side City are on. The fee City paid Chelsea for Enzo Maresca now counts. A fee one club pays another for a head coach is part of the squad cost, spread over his contract (Rule A.1.22(d)); compensation a club receives for releasing one counts with the profit on player sales (Rule A.1.29(g)). We had counted neither. The fee is £17.2m as reported in June 2026 (The Irish Times; it is not yet in filed accounts), on a three-year contract, so £5.7m a year. The squad cost is £633.1m, from £627.4m; the sale profit City need to reach 85% is £11.9m a year, from £5.2m; the headroom is £90.5m, from £96.3m; the range is 68.3% to 78.5%, from 67.7% to 77.8%.

Correction, 28 October 2026. Manchester City’s ratio is unchanged at 74.4%. Elsewhere in the article, the twenty clubs together come to 75.1%, from 75.0%. We checked every transfer in our records against published sources and corrected sixteen entries at eleven clubs where the club’s announcement or a reputable report, read on the page, gives a different fee, contract length or date. The corrections move Arsenal, Chelsea, Sunderland, Crystal Palace and Tottenham up, and Coventry, Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth down.

Correction, 31 October 2026. The twenty clubs together come to 75.3%, from 75.1%, because Chelsea’s and Liverpool’s filed sale profit replaces our modelled figures and 19 transfer entries are corrected across the league. Manchester City’s own ratio, 74.4%, is unchanged. Figures that follow from these are restated with them in the text. The correction does not reverse the article’s conclusion.

Correction, 1 November 2026. City’s ratio is unchanged at 74.4%. Two figures had changed places. The gap between the squad cost divided by 0.85 and the revenue the rule counts is £11.9m, not £5.2m, and the five-year cap adds £5.2m to amortisation, not £11.9m. The squad cost’s breakdown left out about £5.7m for the fee paid for the head coach, counted since 26 October, and two passages still said no such cost had been added. Marmoush’s charge is about £13.2m throughout; one sentence said £11.8m. The note at the head and the passages on the Premier League’s case still described the commission as reviewing the matter; it reported on 29 September, City appealed on 2 October, and sanctions are separate. The label “revenue added by the rule” and the wording of revenue the rule supplies are replaced, because City earned the merit by finishing second. The Marmoush section called his obligation unconditional and said Tottenham owe the fee regardless; the terms are not public, and the first report said it applies if conditions are met. He stays a loan until the registration moves. The sources now list Rule A.1.29(g). A section repeating the article’s points is removed.

Update, 2 November 2026. City’s ratio is unchanged at 74.4%. The Marmoush section now gives the other timing: if his purchase were recognised from the start of the loan, City would lose about £11m of this season’s £13.2m charge and record a small loss on the sale, and the ratio would be about 73.1%. Tottenham’s article carries the matching case.

Update, 2 November 2026 (second of the day). City’s ratio is unchanged at 74.4%. The case added earlier today, in which Omar Marmoush’s purchase would be recognised from the start of his loan, about 73.1%, is withdrawn. He is carried as a loan in 2026/27 and his sale in 2027/28, as the article already said, and no other timing is shown. Tottenham’s article withdraws the matching case. An earlier note named the outlet whose match reports evidence City’s matches; it is not a source this publication cites, so the note now describes them without the name.