Article published  22 Aug 2011 
Etihad's reported £400m deal over 10 years includes a provision to spend around £100m on developing the stadium complex.  Although the numbers are not yet fully in the public domain, it seems around £30m a season will be earmarked to subsidise City's huge wage-bill in their quest to meet the FFP requirements. Given that City are currently running losing £100m+ every season, they face a seemingly impossible struggle to bring down the FFP deficit total  to under E45m for this season and the next.   Seemingly City's only hope would be if the Etihad deal were heavily
'front-end-loaded' - however a deal structured this way is likely to result in problems for further down the line if the City Academy and Hotel complex do not deliver significant results.