FFP just wasn’t as big an obstacle for Man City when they had their takeover. That being said, I think 2 things have to happen for us to be challenging for titles consistently:
Academy/youth recruitment has to be so, so much better than it has been. Anderson and Lewis Miley have been the only 2 recent players to come up through the academy and stick around. It’s as much for the cheap talent as it is the ability to sell players for pure profit (which all the top clubs have been able to do consistently).
Senior recruitment hit rate has to be high. We’re already working on tight limits to comply with FFP, so we can ill afford situations where we pay £60m for a player who flops and is sold for 25% of that later. Even a situation like Tonali will set us back this year, because we just can’t go out and buy another replacement to the detriment of any other areas that need strengthening.
FFP just wasn’t as big an obstacle for Man City when they had their takeover. That being said, I think 2 things have to happen for us to be challenging for titles consistently:
Academy/youth recruitment has to be so, so much better than it has been. Anderson and Lewis Miley have been the only 2 recent players to come up through the academy and stick around. It’s as much for the cheap talent as it is the ability to sell players for pure profit (which all the top clubs have been able to do consistently).
Senior recruitment hit rate has to be high. We’re already working on tight limits to comply with FFP, so we can ill afford situations where we pay £60m for a player who flops and is sold for 25% of that later. Even a situation like Tonali will set us back this year, because we just can’t go out and buy another replacement to the detriment of any other areas that need strengthening.