Club post record losses

Hardly surprising news:

Manchester City football club has reported an annual loss of £92.6m ($148m) for the 2008/09 financial year.

The figures reflect the large sums of money spent on top-class players by Sheikh Mansour since he bought the Eastlands club in September 2008. They include the £32.5m signing of Brazilian star Robinho.

The figures of course are only up to the period ending May 2009 so will not include the outlay on transfers made during the summer of 2009, so expect similar results when the figures are next produced.

Whilst it makes for good headlines, the loss is only a reflection on what the club has stated would happen when they took over, in that for the short term at least the club would have to spend well beyond their means in order to accelerate its progress to a time where the club becomes self-financing, although as we have seen with Chelsea this is not something that is particularly easy to achieve.

David Conn has more on this in The Guardian, stating that ADUG has poured in £395 million of his fortune into the club:

That huge and rapid expenditure is recorded in a document filed at Companies House on Christmas Eve, showing the cancellation of £305m which Mansour initially put into the club as loans. That includes some debt Mansour inherited when he took over the then stricken club from the former prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, and his expenditure since on players including Robinho, Craig Bellamy, Nigel de Jong, Shay Given, Wayne Bridge, Gareth Barry, Roque Santa Cruz, Joleon Lescott, Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Touré and other investment in the infrastructure at Eastlands.

According to the document, all £305m of the loans from Mansour's Abu Dhabi United Group were cancelled in return for new shares in the club. Mansour's group also bought further shares for £89.6m, to finance City's hugely increased wage bill and other expenditure this season.

City last night released figures from their official accounts for the year to 31 May 2009, which includes the first nine months of Mansour's ownership. The club recorded almost a tripling of the previous year's loss, to £92.6m, caused, it said in a statement, "primarily by increased playing staff costs".

Apart from perhaps the level of investment made by ADUG into the club, there isn't much in the way of 'new' news about this. The same situation rings true as it always has done since the takeover; namely that whilst ADUG continue their investment and association with the club any losses (in the short term at least) can be easily absorbed, but if they were to pull we would be in a whole heap of trouble.

Fortunately, that appears to be the last thing ADUG appear to have in mind, with plenty of long term plans rumoured to be in the pipeline - mainly developing the area around the stadium, and with the money invested into the club converted to shares as opposed to loans, the club is of course not saddled with huge debts hanging around its neck.