A closer look at City's spending

City's wage bill appears to have increased by around £8m this season - and should be near the £44m mark in the financial year to 31 May 2008. Last season our wage bill was £36.38m, up from £34.34m the previous year.

Below is an estimated breakdown of the additions and savings that have been made to the wage bill this season. Figures in bold are from newspaper reports which are listed further down. Most of the figures are guesstimates, so if anyone believes a figure to be too high or low please let me know.

Additions to the wage bill


Savings to the wage bill

Sources: Richards (MEN) (previous wage - Sunday Mirror), Samaras (Times), Sven (BBC), Danny Mills (The Sun), Schmeichel (Daily Mail), Castillo (Independent), Corradi (Channel 4), Corluka (Sky Sports)


If you add the extra wage costs to this season's transfer spending, which I put at £53.2m, the additional spending on the team this season is up to more than £61m.

However, this should be put in the context of the increase in revenue following this summer's £2.7billion three-year TV deal.

Last season City earned £21.37m in TV and prize money, but the average Premiership club is set to receive around £40m this time round. Considering the number of times we've been on TV this season, it's likely we'll be receiving an above average payout.

It's also worth noting that most of our transfer deals involve overseas players, which means payments can be spread over the length of the contract. So I'm estimating that we'll only be paying around £13m-£14m in transfer fees in this financial year which, added to the extra wage costs, leaves us with a figure similar to the increase in our TV revenue.