Manchester City go into tonight’s title-defining match against Aston Villa knowing that a heavy Uefa fine for their breach of Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules may also hit the club’s wage spending in next season’s Premier League.
The level of fine City face is currently the subject of negotiations between the club and the European governing body and while it would be surprising if they face the same £49million punishment — payable over three years — that Paris St Germain must pay, there will be a heavy financial cost.
Standard Sport understands that the Premier League are awaiting the resolution of Uefa’s negotiations with City before deciding whether the fine imposed on the club should count towards their own new FFP regime.
Their new rules stipulate that a club may only increase wages by £4m next season unless they up their revenues to cover a lift beyond that.
City’s revenues may be offset against a Uefa fine to limit the wages lift, potentially affecting the amount they can offer summer targets including Fernando and Eliaquim Mangala, of Porto, and Arsenal’s Bacary Sagna.
City are refusing to respond to Uefa leaks on the FFP sanctions process, considering the idea of making the deliberations akin to a running transfer market saga to be an undignified one.
But they do face a difficult decision if they cannot resolve their disagreement with Uefa over how seriously in breach they are.
Though Uefa president Michel Platini has stated that FFP defaulters will not be banned from the Champions League, clubs who refuse to accept the FFP sanction and ultimately take European football’s governing body to the Court of Arbitration for Sport do face that risk.
For now, City are attempting to prevent the saga overshadowing a prospective second title in three seasons, with a win against Villa tonight meaning that a draw at home to West Ham on Sunday would see them home.
Though City’s superior defensive qualities seem likely to prove decisive in the final chase for the finishing line with Liverpool, there is certainly a patched-up look to Manuel Pellegrini’s squad.
He hopes to have Argentina striker Sergio Aguero — missing tonight with a groin problem — fit to face West Ham, though admitted ahead of this match that Yaya Toure, his most influential player this season, has been struggling to finish games. Of his decision to remove Toure after an hour of Saturday’s 3-2 win at Everton, Pellegrini said: “I just made the change because he is coming from his [muscle] injury and so he is not able to play 90 minutes but he didn’t have any problems in the last game.”
Captain Vincent Kompany has also been struggling to make it through games and described how at Goodison Park he felt like he had been playing “with a plaster around my knee the last weeks”.
Though he insists he is now fine, he has not looked imperious lately and the pace of Andreas Weimann, who scored in Villa’s 3-2 Premier League win over City eight months ago, creates grounds for concern. The Liverpool camp may be in a desperately disconsolate mood after the Crystal Palace result but Villa’s pace can boost the Merseysiders’ fragile hopes.
“An incredible team on the counter- attack and better away from home,” is how Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers described Villa last week.
Pellegrini’s strategy is to refuse any discussion about the quality either of his own team or the opposition.
“I don’t want to talk more about the title race,” he said heading tonight’s game. “We just have to think about the next game. We have games here at home. All the other things we can analyse when the race is over.”
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