It's doom and gloom at Manchester City, with the club down to fourth in the Premier League following their 2-1 defeat at Crystal Palace Monday night. On Tuesday's ESPN FC TV show, Craig Burley ran through City's squad listing the players he'd keep and ditch. And, yes, Manuel Pellegrini's job is in peril as well, with media reports citing a host of managers as potential replacements.
But here's the thing. There is only so much City can do. The room to maneuver is minimal. And that is likely down to bad planning at the top as much as it is Pellegrini and his players.
Last year, Manchester City accepted a settlement offer from UEFA relating to a breach of Financial Fair Play requirements. As part of this, they agreed to limit their net spend in 2014-15 and 2015-16. City revealed that the limit was 60 million Euros ($65 million). They are lobbying UEFA to have the limit lifted this summer given their positive results in their last club accounts. There is no provision for this to happen in the settlement but they are very confident in light of the fact that under FFP rules, the club was profitable in 2013-14. As it stands now however, the net spending limits remain in place.
A net spend of $65 million is a lot but probably not enough to overhaul the squad while continuing to challenge for the title. That means that if you want to buy for more than $65 million, you need to sell. And the problem with many City players is that, simply put, they're difficult to sell for large amounts of money.
Amazing as it may seem, of the 24 players who appeared for City in the Premier League this season, just seven will be younger than 28 at the start of next season. The other 17 are all what you'd call veterans and because they are at City, they tend to be highly paid veterans who are tough to shift for substantial money.
Take Edin Dzeko, for example. He's 29 and under contract until 2018. How much could he possibly fetch on the market when any team signing him knows they'll have to shell out some $30 million on wages in the next three years and he won't have any resale value when his deal is over?
Or how about Samir Nasri? City are on the hook for him until 2019, when he'll be 32. That's a $50 million commitment after this season. Whatever else you may think of him, he's obviously a gifted player. But at what price?
And then there's Yaya Toure. He'll be 32 and with two years left on his a deal worth around $15 million a season. Who's going to take on that type of commitment and then pay a substantial transfer fee on top of that?
Football isn't very big on transparency so the argument of wages often gets glossed over. But the reality is that there are very few clubs in the world that can afford players who earn north of $10 million a season. And even fewer who will pay a guy $10 million a season and also shell out over $20 million in transfer fees. There are fewer still who'll do it for someone with no resale value.
It has happened before, of course. Manchester United did it 2½ years ago when they picked up Robin van Persie. But it's an occurrence so rare that it's not anything you can count on. Truth is, you won't be able to raise significant amounts of money by selling Toure, Nasri or Dzeko. Jesus Navas (29 years old, two years left) and Fernandinho (30 in May, two years left) are in the same boat, as are Vincent Kompany (29 this month) and David Silva (29), who are locked up through 2019. It's not that these aren't great players; it's that few clubs can afford them and as a result, they're not worth much in the way of assets.
Well, how about City's seven younger players? Can you raise some money there?
Well, for a start, they're not that much younger. Sergio Aguero and Wilfried Bony are both 26. Bony just arrived, so he won't move, and while Aguero could probably fetch a very significant fee ($75 million or higher) he's obviously not the guy you want to sell. Eliaquim Mangala had a poor first season and cost a lot of money: obviously his value will have declined, though, given that he's 24, City could still get something for him. At 25, Stevan Jovetic will have some value, too, though that will be severely mitigated by his wages ($8 million a year) and the fact that he's been a dud for much of his City career.
Things go from bad to worse when you consider City's homegrown player requirements. You'd imagine that Frank Lampard will be gone (finally). And James Milner, who becomes a free agent in June, could well not re-sign. Milner has the benefit of being both English and actually useful to the team beyond filling quotas (not a combination to take for granted) and the fact that he could walk for nothing is one of the biggest indictments of sporting director Txitxi Begiristain's regime.
City can, of course, get more homegrown tackling dummies to fulfill the requirement (or clone Derdyck Boyata) but that just fills up roster spots and robs you of depth. You're better off, when you can, filling the homegrown quota with quality except that again either takes money or patience, waiting for the club's academy to actually generate talent.
The club has been criticized for not growing their own stars at their state-of-the-art academy too, though that's perhaps somewhat unfair. It takes time to develop kids, though the fact that City's academy was once -- we're talking pre-Mansour -- one of the best in England but has offered little in recent years should be a concern. Clearly, at some point, something went very wrong and we'll only know in a few years' time whether it has been fixed.
Bottom line?
In some ways, Man City's squad is a ticking time bomb. The bulk of it is not excessively old, but it's approaching the point where careers start to decline. And, what's more, given the age distribution, if you don't do something about it, they're all going to age together and then you'll really have a problem a few years down the line.
Logic would suggest replacing a couple of guys -- Fernandinho, Dzeko and Nasri types -- with younger versions who can guarantee the same level of production. The problem, however, is that this is an expensive thing to do. A 23-year-old Nasri clone will cost you a heck of a lot more than the 28-year-old version. And because you're Manchester City, he'll probably want to be paid close to what the 28-year-old version takes home. So simply maintaining the productivity in those roles is going to be pricey. And that's before you address other obvious issues, like upgrading the other areas of the pitch that need upgrading and figuring out how you'll fill the homegrown quota. Suddenly that $65 million doesn't seem like so much to go around when on top of everything else, you can't raise that much through sales.
All of this also means that the Manchester City job is unlikely to be attractive to the kind of instant-fix, super-coach the club have been linked with of late, someone like Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti or Diego Simeone. Even assuming they become available, would they be enthused by the idea of moving to Manchester and basically being told they need to sink or swim with Pellegrini's squad because the club's net spend is capped at $65 million for the next two seasons?
There are two other options. One is keeping Pellegrini and hoping that director of football Txiki Begiristain (or his replacement, should he get the boot) can stretch that net spend as far as it will go, making intelligent value investments. And, yes, it can be done. Hindsight is 20/20 so it's a bit mean to do this but for less than half of what Fernando and Mangala cost, Begiristain could have picked up, say, Emre Can and Shkodran Mustafi, who would have been as productive (if not more) and are both 22. There are countless other examples. Yes, it's difficult to pluck out value signings especially when you're at a big club. But that's why Begiristain has such a big rep and a big paycheck: He can deliver.
The other option is simply taking a huge hit and rebuilding with a new coach who is willing to take a gamble. Get whatever you can (it won't be much) for most of these guys in the 28-to-31 age range (in some cases you may have to pay to send them away), spend on promising youngsters and accept the fact that you may miss out on the Champions League for a year or two.
Maybe even sacrifice Aguero, if that's what it takes. A younger, ambitious manager with less leverage than a Guardiola or an Ancelotti might go for it. The problem is that it's a high-risk operation. And for a club in City's position, missing out on Champions League revenue is a huge blow that will likely have further FFP implications.
The irony in all this is that as a club, City have held up their end of the FFP bargain. The figures for the year 2013-14 show a loss of $34.4 million. However, $24 million of that is withheld prize money for breaching FFP. And when you take out spending on capital infrastructure and youth development (neither of which count in the FFP calculation), they actually made a profit of $13 million.
So what next? My guess is that Pellegrini might end up sticking around. And that City will tweak their squad rather than overhaul it, albeit with more of an eye toward youth. It may mean they end up marginally weaker than this season. But it would be the least risky route and would help defuse some of the problems created by what has been a poorly thought-out approach to squad-building.