City not facing FFP penalties, insists chief Gould

support, but the transfer market has shown only minimal signs of returning to the level it was at prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.”

City have been working to reduce the wage bill to fall in line with EFL Profit and Sustainability regulations. According to EFL rules, clubs are not allowed to exceed losses of £39m over a rolling period of three years.

Those rules changed last year to take into consideration the crippling losses of the Covid pandemic. So the two Covid-impact season of 2019/20 and 2020/21 are packaged together and losses taken as an average.

City will also be also to claim for Covid add-backs including the estimated lost revenue for ticket prices and, more importantly, estimated losses due to the collapse of the transfer market.

Last month at a fans forum, Gould eased concerns that City will face a points deduction.

He said: “FFP has been an issue for all the clubs, particularly at the Covid losses. We were well within limits for the end of last season. For this season we’re not forecasting any problems either so positive report on that one. It’s a complicated calculation that’s beyond me, but there were a lot of Covid add-backs that the EFL allowed to be taken into consideration and the most important one being the collapse of the transfer market because you’d be aware transfers and sales have been very important to the club.

“That’s an add-back that’s been allowed by the EFL and the good news is we aren’t anticipating any problems this season. We don’t believe we’ve got a points deduction hanging over us.”