Transfer special: how City's spending comparesUpdated: December 20th, 2006
We’ve spent less on transfers since 2003 than any other club in the Premiership.
The club have made a £17.38million profit from transfer deals since John Wardle took over from David Bernstein as chairman in March 2003.
Not surprisingly, Chelsea top the list of spenders. What may be surprising is that they have spent more than all the other clubs combined.
Premiership transfer spending since 2003
(profits are in brackets)
Most of the figures were compiled from soccerbase.com and sportinglife.com. City’s figures were taken from a variety of sources which are listed further down the page.
The £17.38m total for City excludes add-on clauses, as it isn’t possible to determine how much of these have been paid.
The exception is the SWP deal, which was a guaranteed £21m plus up to £3m in add-on payments. In a recent interview with Pearce, the Independent revealed we had received £23m from Chelsea, which is the figure used for the table.
Below is the full list of players bought and sold by City since March 2003. Bosmans and free transfers are not included in the list. Eyal Berkovic’s transfer to Portsmouth, which some reports listed as £500,000, is excluded as soccerbase and the BBC both list it as a free.
Players bought since 2003
*£0.35m (€0.5m) for each season City qualify for UEFA cup knock-out stages
** based on club and international appearances
Players sold since 2003
* dependent on Norwich getting promoted
Sources: Nicolas Anelka (iafrica.com); Eyal Berkovic (TheFA.com); Lee Croft (clubcall); Bernardo Corradi (Reuters); Willo Flood (icWales); Shaun Goater (The Sun); Dietmar Hamann (MEN); Joe Hart (PFA); Steve Howey The FA.com; Andreas Isaksson (soccerbase); Jonathan Macken (Telegraph) ; Matthew Mills (carling.com); Georgios Samaras (Heerenveen official site - in Dutch); Darius Vassell (Times); Bradley Wright-Phillips (MEN); Shaun Wright-Phillips (AccountancyAge).
More on the Mackintosh Mystery
I received an email yesterday from someone who had contacted the club over yesterday’s claims that chief executive Alistair Mackintosh was once a Man United mascot.
Mackintosh emailed him back to point out that the original piece in The Guardian was inaccurate, and that he was actually a mascot for Stoke City for a game against United.
What hasn’t been cleared up is why the MEN claimed Mackintosh was a City fan as a youngster, when he himself has never made that claim.
Mackintosh also pointed out that he has been to every City home and away game in the last seven years. Which makes me wonder where the author of this story from the Daily Telegraph got his information from.