^^^^ This is my worst fear for City. Next season could be the last chance some of our better players give this club to get them playing in the Prem and if we don't achieve it through lack of investment in the squad it could mean the start of a slippery downward slope. A lot of the posts on here seem to apathetically accept that there will be little money available in the summer. Well if that's true all I can say is forget the Premiership and get used to being strugglers again. Supporters who have real ambition get angry when that ambiton isn't reflected by their club and if City spend peanuts in the summer I for one will be seriously pi55ed off.
That's not how it'll work when we buy players though. They're going to have to use the club's accounts to determine what's been spent and what's been earnt, or they're going to have to investigate every club seperately for themselves and that's prohbitively expensive. Take Hobbs who we signed last June for £800k on a contract to 2014. Our accounts are done to the end of July so his contract covers the following years: 2010/11 (just June and July but it counts) 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Even if we handed over the cash in full last summer, his transfer fee (and any admin and agents costs that I'm ignoring for now) will be split evenly between those years, so he'll be in the accounts costing us £200k a year (plus his wages obviously). If we signed players in January this year on a 2 1/2 year contract it would be split between 2011/12, 2012/13, and2013/14. If we sign them in June or July this year it'll cover the same years so the cost for the fair play rules will be exactly the same. The difference is that in the summer window we might get them for lower fees, or be able to get players that weren't available in January.
I'm more concerned about heads turning. Hopefully Stewart, Chester, Dudgeon and Evans are enjoying living together enough to be extremely reluctant to separate.
