Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola(Image: Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images)
Manchester City have kickstarted their transfer activity with the signing of Rayan Ait-Nouri as they plot a £100million+ start to the the summer.
The Blues have completed a deal for Wolves left back Ait-Nouri with the 23-year-old joining for £33million.
Lyon playmaker Rayan Cherki and AC Milan midfielder Tijjani Reijnders will follow with the trio set to cost around £100million in total.
Marcus Bettinelli will also arrive on a free transfer to replace the departed Scott Carson as third choice goalkeeper.
City have been the most active Premier League club in the early window, which shuts at 7pm today, on the back of a January window where four signings arrived at a cost of £182million.
It's a huge outlay considering the Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) that are hampering some clubs and will dwarf the spend of their [Premier League](https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/all-about/premier-league) rivals over the same period.
But City have plenty of financial room to manoeuvre courtesy of their success on and off the pitch in recent years. The club banked record revenues of £715million on their way to a pre-tax profit of £73.8million in the 2023-24 period.
PSR rules allow for clubs to lose a maximum of £105million over a three-year period, not accounting for losses attributed to allowable deductions such as investment in infrastructure, the academy, the women’s team and community initiatives.
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For many clubs, staying within those lines has been hard but City’s last three years were all profitable to the tune of a combined £196million. According to figures presented by football finance expert Swiss Ramble, the club is net positive when including allowable deductions at £302million for the three-year period up to 2023/24.
So what of 2024/25, the current financial year where the new signings and transfer spend will fall under. Well, with the £42million profit from 2021/22 dropping off the three-year monitoring period, the club would be allowed to lose up to £369million according to forecasts by Swiss Ramble and still remain complaint.
The £182m January outlay, based on a five-year deal for all players involved, would be an annual amortised cost of around £36.4million to be added on to the amortised costs already on the balance sheet of £165.1million from 2023/24. Savinho’s arrival last summer will add in another £4.3million on to that.
Some costs will drop off, however, while a sizeable profit was made to the tune of around £112million through the sales of Julian Alvarez, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Joao Cancelo, Liam Delap, Tommy Doyle and Sergio Gomez.
A number of those deals involved the sales of academy-produced talent, meaning that held no book value and represented pure accounting profit. That will already cover what City have added for the first year through the addition of their new players.
City have provided themselves with the flexibility to act and still not have it impact their financials to any great extent. Most teams spend heavily to catch up, City have done so to ensure that they stay ahead.