City halve losses to €62.5m

Manchester City have halved their losses for a second consecutive year with the club confident they will break even as early as next season and comply with Uefa’s financial fair play rules.

City recorded a £51.6m (€62.5m) loss last season, down from £97.9m (€118.6m) in 2012 and £197.5m (€239.4m) the previous season. Turnover was a record high of £271m (€328.5m), up from £231m (€280m), and is the second-highest in the Premier League.

City have also paid off all of their debts, which totalled £58m (€70m) a year ago.

City will have extra income to look forward to this season from new commercial contracts, around £25m (€30m) extra from the new Premier League TV deals and more cash from the Champions League, having qualified for the knock-out stages for the first time.

In terms of Uefa’s financial fair play rules (FFP), club insiders believe that once the money spent on facilities and youth development are taken into account they will be within the €45m limit of losses allowed by Europe’s governing body.

Meanwhile, Premier League clubs once again dominated the international transfer market in 2013, topping the US$1b US dollar-mark (€731m) for the first time.

The English clubs, plus Swansea and Cardiff from Wales, spent €805m on overseas transfers last year, and of that more than €36.5m went straight into the pockets of agents.

The figures — revealed in the Global Transfer Market 2014 report, published by Fifa — only include international transfers between different countries. Premier League figures released in November disclosed that €120m was paid to agents, including for domestic transfers.

After the Premier League, Italian clubs were the next biggest spenders on overseas transfers (€346m), followed by France (€306m), Spain (€232m) and Germany (€174m).

Spanish clubs, however, were the biggest net earners for transfers, with net income of €181m.

The report states that across the world there were a total of 12,309 international transfers last year, 4% more than in 2012, and 90% of these were free transfers with no fee paid.

Fifa’s transfers matching system aims to provide a clearing house for all international transfers, with clubs having to register agents involved plus any fees and add-ons.

The system should be able to shed some light on the complicated deal that took Neymar from Santos to Barcelona, with much of the fee going to a company headed by the player’s father.

“Obviously the Neymar transfer was in the system and that has generated some recent interest — and we are now going to do everything we are required to do to make sure our obligations are met,” said Mark Goddard, general manager of the Fifa transfers matching system.