Premier League SCR
How much can Manchester City spend?
Under the Premier League's Squad Cost Ratio rules, Manchester City have a
guaranteed spending limit of £690.9m
— 85% of adjusted football revenue of £812.8m.
Against their estimated squad cost that leaves £61.8m of headroom.
Their Red Threshold — the 115% ceiling beyond which points deductions apply — is
£934.7m.
£812.8m is adjusted revenue: headline turnover of
£694.1m plus a three-season average of
£118.7m profit on player sales, which is the
denominator SCR actually uses.
Manchester City: the SCR breakdown
-
Estimated revenue (football)
reported
£694.1m
-
+ Player trading profit/loss (3-yr average)
+£118.7m
-
Latest single season was +£95m
not used alone
-
= Adjusted revenue (SCR basis)
£812.8m
-
85% SCR limit
£690.9m
-
Estimated squad cost
estimated
£629.1m
-
Player wages
£408m
-
Player amortisation
£169m
-
Agents' fees
£52.1m
-
Squad cost = player wages + player amortisation + agents' fees. Composed estimate — no club discloses the SCR split.
-
Headroom vs 85% limit
+£61.8m
-
Red Threshold (115% of adjusted revenue)
£934.7m
-
Headroom vs Red Threshold
+£305.6m
UEFA squad cost rule (UEFA Champions League) — a separate regulator's rule, running alongside the domestic one
-
UEFA limit (70% of adjusted revenue)
£568.9m
-
Headroom vs UEFA limit
−£60.2m
UEFA: Balanced
High spending power
- squad cost is 77.4% of adjusted revenue
For reference, Transfermarkt's current squad market value is
£1,255m
(source)
— a transfer-market valuation, not the same thing as squad cost. It's shown purely as a
sanity-check on the scale of the composed wage/amortisation figure above, not as an input to
the SCR calculation itself.
What this means
On these estimates, Manchester City sit comfortably inside the 85% Green
Threshold. They have room to invest in the squad without straining the rules.
UEFA's rule is separate. Because Man City are in the
UEFA Champions League, UEFA's 70%/100% squad cost rule applies alongside the Premier
League's. On the same adjusted revenue the 70% line is £568.9m,
leaving
−£60.2m
— UEFA status amber. A club can be green with the Premier League
and amber with UEFA at the same time; UEFA fines and restricts squad registration rather than
deducting points. Manchester City's UEFA squad cost position in full →
· How the two rules differ →
Summer 2026 window vs SCR headroom
-
Window spend (gross)
£445.3m
-
Window sales
£307.2m
-
Net spend
estimated
£138.1m
-
Pre-window effective SCR headroom (85% limit plus any top-up or allowance)
£61.8m
Spent beyond headroom
A net spend of £138.1m is
£76.3m beyond the
£61.8m of effective headroom Man City had before the
window opened — the 85% limit plus any owner top-up or allowance, minus estimated squad cost, the same basis as the
transfer-window table.
Outlets disagree materially on City's net position. Spend clusters around £440-456m across sources (TeamTalk core-fee total used here, excluding add-ons). Sales income far more contested (TeamTalk £401.3m internally inconsistent with its own itemised sales of £295m; Sports Mole's £307.2m used here as the most internally-consistent published total). Given the spread, all fields are estimated.
Source.
Spending beyond calculated headroom is not automatically a breach: transfer fees are
amortised over the contract, sales offset signings, and none of it reaches SCR squad cost
until the next accounts are filed.
Every club's window spend vs headroom →
Old rules vs new: PSR compared to SCR
City have been broadly PSR-profitable across recent cycles; 2024/25 alone produced a rare £9.9m net loss (first loss in ~decade, per Swiss Ramble/matchdayfinance), but no source publishes the rolling three-year PSR calculation figure itself, and City's PSR position is separately entangled with the ongoing 115-charges disciplinary case, which concerns alleged historical (2009-2018) associated-party and related disclosures rather than the standard three-year loss test. Returning null rather than estimating.
Note on this club's figures. 2024/25 accounts (year to 30 Jun 2025). Revenue £694.1m and player trading profit £95.2m confirmed via matchdayfinance and Swiss Ramble (swissramble.substack.com/p/manchester-city-finances-202425) — both corroborate the site's earlier benchmark figures for revenue and trading profit. HOWEVER the earlier benchmark's £554m squad_cost cannot be reproduced from verified components and is not used here: Swiss Ramble/matchdayfinance report player wages of £408m (down from £412-413m) as a distinct line from total staff costs of £578-579m (84% of revenue, which sweeps in admin/commercial/academy/women's team and is explicitly NOT the SCR figure per site convention). Player amortisation is £169-170m. Agents' fees are sourced from the FA's published intermediary fees disclosure (fanbanter.co.uk/thefa.com) for the Feb2024-Feb2025 reporting period: £52.1m. Composed squad_cost = 408+169+52.1 = £629.1m. On adjusted revenue (694.1+95=789.1m) this is ~79.7% (amber, not the ~70.2% green in the original benchmark); on gross revenue alone it is ~90.6%. No named analyst (Swiss Ramble, matchdayfinance, theesk.org) publishes an exact SCR percentage for City 2024/25 — theesk.org only states qualitatively that City are 'expected to remain comfortably within...the Premier League's new 70% Squad Cost Ratio' once player-sale profits are included and non-football costs excluded, which is directionally consistent with a green/amber-not-red outcome but does not itself corroborate 70.2% or £554m. Treat squad_cost here as this site's own composition, flagged per CLAUDE.md's estimated-confidence rule, with the gap from the original benchmark stated rather than reconciled. Separately: Man City face 115 charges from the Premier League for alleged historical financial rule breaches (2009-2018) — an independent, ongoing disciplinary matter unrelated to SCR calculation; per theesk.org (April 2026) the tribunal panel has been silent since December 2024 and potential sanctions (reported 40-60 points) are unresolved. UEFA competition confirmed: Champions League for 2026/27, City's 16th consecutive season in the competition (mancity.com, Sky Sports).
3-YEAR TRADING PROFIT / TRANSFERMARKT NOTE: 2023/24 profit on disposal of players (£139m) and 2022/23 (£122m) both sourced from Swiss Ramble's 'Manchester City Finances 2023/24' article, which states profit rose '£17m (14%) from £122m to £139m, a new club high', and cross-confirmed by the separate 'Manchester City Finances 2022/23' article, which states profit rose '£54m (80%) from £68m to £122m' — the £122m figure agrees across both independent articles. These are Swiss Ramble's derived figures from the club's published annual accounts (profit on disposal of intangible assets/players line). Note this means Man City's current +£95m (2024/25) is actually BELOW their recent 2-year average, not an inflated outlier — smoothing pulls the SCR denominator's trading-profit component up slightly rather than down for this club, the opposite direction from most other rows in this dataset. Transfermarkt squad value read directly as €1.47bn, converted to GBP using a mid-market EUR/GBP rate of 0.85375849 (10 Aug 2026), giving £1,255,024,980. This is a market-value sanity-check figure only, not squad cost. Summer 2026 window: spend £440.3m, sales £314.9m, net spend £125.4m (Sky Sports/GiveMeSport, transfer fees not accounting profit — the P&L profit on disposal is fee less remaining book value, so this is an upper bound on the player-trading profit that will land in FY2026/27). The stored player_trading_profit remains the filed figure and is NOT adjusted for this window.
Source.
Compare Man City with another club
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Figures are illustrative estimates from published accounts, named analyst estimates and
public reporting, not official SCR submissions.
Premier League squad cost is composed from wage, amortisation and agents' fee
components or anchored to a published analyst estimate, because no club discloses the SCR
split — which is why it is always flagged
estimated.
Last reviewed 2026-09-03.
Full rules explainer →