The introduction of a salary cap will put an end to Manchester City’s accounting gymnastics, writes IAN HERBERT, after the Premier League champions voted against its introduction.

It is no surprise that Manchester City are one of only three clubs to oppose the spending cap. It is in part the Premier League’s latest attempt to prevent Gulf sovereign wealth funds and wider Champions League revenue from destroying any notion of financial parity between their rivals’ haves and have-nots.

The advantage of being a Gulf state owner is that, as every Gulf state-owned club can attest, a phalanx of state-owned companies suddenly becomes terribly interested in sponsoring you – and paying top dollar for this privilege.

In City’s case, there are myriad other ways to earn extra money to spend – such as selling the image rights of their own players to a company in which they had an interest, selling their “intellectual property » to other clubs they owned, and similar acts. accounting gymnastics.

The complexity of what constitutes a truly earned “turnover” is a profound relief to those living in the real world that a new system of expense control can, from the following season, be anchored in the figure mundane and transparently calculable from the lowest club. revenue from Premier League broadcast and commercial deals.

The mathematics of this new system are not exactly radical. Football financial analyst Kieran Maguire says the decision to set a cap at five times the bottom club’s revenue, rather than 4.5, means that, based on his figures, only Chelsea would have exceeded the £518 million limit. This season’s sterling, based on Southampton earned £103.6 million from television and commercial revenue last season.

Manchester City one of three Premier League teams to oppose proposed salary cap

The defending champions have benefited from various ways to earn extra money.

But this important step towards a first Premier League cap would tackle the crazed executive management of clubs like Everton and Nottingham Forest – at a time when relentlessly rising wage costs and weakening demand from broadcasters for broadcast rights live television means that the cycle of overspending must occur. to an end.

UEFA led the way at the start of this season, banning clubs participating in their tournaments from spending more than 90 percent of their revenue on their squads. Next season this figure will drop to 80 percent and from 2025-2026 it will be 70 percent. The Premier League is looking at something similar – “the team cost rule”, as it is called – from 2025-26. Further proof that the years of considerable losses will soon be a thing of the past.

Last year, Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish called on member clubs to be “bold” in introducing a system to ensure competitiveness, observing that there are “whims” over the way in which “turnover occurs”.

These clubs, with the exception of City, the revenue-generating giant Manchester United and, curiously, Aston Villa, heeded his words.

Only Chelsea would have breached the proposed regulation based on this season

Crystal Palace chief Steve Parish has called on clubs to be bold in introducing a new system.

The 115 charges of breaching financial viability rules that City face – and vigorously deny – may seem to belong to another era by the time they are made and any appeal process, if necessary, has been exhausted.

This doesn’t mean you should let them melt. They remain the asterisk to everything that is happening in the current campaign.