Has City got a problem with Financial Fair Play?

Now I fully expect City to be able to comply with the Financial Fair play rules.

Missing out on the CC final and a FA Cup run isn't materially going to make a big difference. We might have made a couple of million from those cup runs.

Missing out on the next round of the Champions League will cost us a hefty amount, but that shouldn't stop us complying.

What I can foresee as a potential problem is that we just don't seem to have the funds to be able to buy top players.

Young kids, no problem as FFP rules don't affect those costs. We can spend £100M on our academy if we want and it doesn't make one bit of difference to the FFP rules.

We've seen from this transfer window that we aren't buying even though Bobby says he wants a new midfielder. We all know we could have done with a good CB and a new striker to give us a 4th option.

We seem to have to sell to buy and even that hasn't gone too well. I think only Ned has gone out of the door and only for a measly £2.5M. We'd get nothing for Bridge if he left and only Tevez would bring in serious cash.

Even if we offloaded a few in the summer (Ade for £8M and Kolo (nominal), RSC (nominal) etc.) we'd have about £35M for transfers.

Where are we going to get the money to buy even a couple of top players before, hopefully, our own production line starts delivering?

Fortunately, we have the nucleus of a good team for a few years with most players under 26. Hart, Micah, VK, Milner, Silva, Aguero, Yaya, Zabba would form part of that nucleus for me.

Has anyone else thought about this at all?

I think you're worrying too much, Dawg.

We've bought in too many players and paid over the odds for a lot of them. We knew this would have to stop and we knew that the main driver for the last couple of pieces in the jigsaw has been the sale of Tevez. Seeing as that's not happened as yet, it's understandable that we've not been able to pick anyone else up.

Dipping out of the CL so early has hit our finances, but I can't help but wonder if that was part of the plan. We need to show we're moving in the right direction, but maybe getting past the group stages this season would've meant we'd need to do it every season or show a potential shortfall. By failing this season, we can do it next year and show a positive in the balance sheets. Of course, I could be wrong about that, but I do wonder why we didn't play our best team in Europe.

Anyway, our nearest competitor in the league isn't loaded down with top players and look how they're doing. What we need isn't top players, we need a winning team ethic and money isn't going to get us that.

we need that winning team ethic and mentality, that's for sure. But we also need to have that financial muscle to buy players when we really need them.

We picked up Hargreaves in the summer because we didn't have the spare money for anyone else.

i think the monery will be generated by off loading the extras we have in the summer Adebayor, Santa Cruz, Weiss most of the players on loan and maybe some of the deadwood like Bridge if he has not left before then.

But even with selling Ade, Bridge, Rocky and Tevez, we'd be lucky to bring in £35M.

Sell on a few younger [players that won't make it (Weiss etc.) and we might squeeze an extra £5M.

That may be enough for 2 decent players.

Unless we offload an underperformer or undesirable such as AJ or NDJ, we won't have enough brass to spend lavishly.

Yes, I know our owners have said that that was our last big splurge, but do you guys really think we are good enough yet?

Utd have been poor and are breathing down our necks.

United were poor last season and won the league comfortably. What does that tell us? And how many top players have they brought in since then? What do we take from that?

United have a team ethic and a certain swagger. We don't. Buying more players won't fix it, as we see from Nasri's faltering attempts to break into games. We won't scare people with big names if they see those names disintegrate when the game turns against them. We have the players, but we need to take what we have and turn them into a team, get them to work together and push for victory. And then make bloody sure that other teams know it when we take to the field.

We all knew the spending would stop sooner or later and I'm glad it has. Now it means Bobby has to prove his credentials by moulding a team from what he's bought already, instead of chopping and changing like Chelsea do.

You might notice how quiet this window has been because we're not funding the transfers for other teams... that should work in our favour.

i agree we have to mould a team,m but we still need some more as we are being found out with our backup players.

maybe this will be bobby's comeuppance as he has bought plenty of players.

the funny thing is our first team consists of several players pre bobby:

Hart, Micah, Vinnie, Lezza, Milner, Barry