Premier League SCR head-to-head
Man City vs Liverpool
Side by side
Manchester City
- 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
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.
Liverpool
- Estimated revenue (football) reported £703m
- + Player trading profit/loss (3-yr average) +£36m
- Latest single season was +£52m not used alone
- = Adjusted revenue (SCR basis) £739m
- 85% SCR limit £628.2m
- Estimated squad cost estimated £453.5m
- Player wages £321m
- Player amortisation £117m
- Agents' fees £15.5m
- Squad cost = player wages + player amortisation + agents' fees. Composed estimate — no club discloses the SCR split.
- Headroom vs 85% limit +£174.7m
- Red Threshold (115% of adjusted revenue) £849.9m
- Headroom vs Red Threshold +£396.4m
UEFA squad cost rule (UEFA Champions League) — a separate regulator's rule, running alongside the domestic one
- UEFA limit (70% of adjusted revenue) £517.3m
- Headroom vs UEFA limit +£63.9m
For reference, Transfermarkt's current squad market value is £842.4m (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 drives the difference
Neither club has an owner top-up to lean on: Premier League SCR is 85% of adjusted revenue, full stop, with a 30% allowance above it that shrinks after any breach. Adjusted revenue nets in profit on player sales averaged over three seasons — Man City +£118.7m, Liverpool +£36m — so a club that sells well buys itself headroom without touching its wage bill. Man City and Liverpool are also bound by UEFA's stricter 70% rule this season, which is the tighter constraint of the two for most clubs in Europe.